


Contrapositive

by oflights



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Sexual Identity, Summer Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 15:41:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15710226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oflights/pseuds/oflights
Summary: It will end, everything ends. If Tyson fucked things up with Roman, then he’ll fuck things up with Gabe. It’s just logic.





	Contrapositive

**Author's Note:**

> Buckle up, friends. I have lots of notes as always!
> 
> [This song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxLYCKB8v2w) is the entire plot of this fic  
> [This tweet](https://twitter.com/SICKOFWOLVES/status/892235647729238016) is the entire plot of this fic  
> The part titles are all either [instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/24AzcKwv-e/) [captions](https://www.instagram.com/p/BIDsOCEjygY/) or [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/BL16t_zBIvL/) [comments](https://78.media.tumblr.com/fe37c11155d38e7ac4571ff93fd25dc9/tumblr_inline_oi399kGgFj1qcfim6_540.jpg) and knowing that and who wrote them makes them better, imo. bossekrull = gabe. 
> 
> This evolved from a conversation with Molly about Roman being a summer fling and Gabe being a winter boyfriend, and obviously it spiraled thanks to Emily and Britta's encouragement, so thanks for that all of you!! And thanks to Bridget for the beta work as always.

**Part One: #cannes #italy**   
_Summer 2015_

The France trip gets flung together haphazardly over the last couple of days in Prague, over texts and in exhausted hotel room chats when everyone hangs around Nate and Tyson’s room after games. Tyson explains this to Cody when they grab beers and lunch during the medal rounds, which is fine because Switzerland’s already out.

“So you guys have no idea where you’re going,” Cody says, rolling his eyes. “Typical. I’m coming with you.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Tyson says. It probably doesn’t sound as authoritative as he means it because his mouth is mostly full of bread and cheese. Nor does following it up with “Wait, what?” help with that, but whatever.

Cody’s eyes sparkle, and he notably chews and swallows his food before answering, the snob. Like Tyson hasn’t seen him at his absolute drunkest back in Kelowna, crunching Cheetos up in his mouth and then spitting out a spray of orange dust and yelling that he was a fire-breathing dragon. That stuff doesn’t just go away when you fuck off to Europe and obtain Swiss citizenship, and it’s Tyson’s sworn duty to always remind him of that.

“I’ll come too,” Cody says, now playing the part of a human instead of a dragon. “I can plan an actual itinerary for you guys so you don’t wind up at the bottom of a country ditch in the Gers.”

“What the hell is that?” Tyson asks, and Cody laughs out loud.

“Point proven, come on.”

“Okay, sure,” Tyson says, once he’s brushed off the insults and considered the bigger picture, which is that he gets to add one of his oldest buddies to what promises to be a really fun trip no matter where they end up. He hasn’t gotten to hang out with Cody for any good length of time since he left North America, and it might be good to have someone along who knows Europe a little better than just through hockey tournaments. “You can come. Brayd’ll be happy, too.”

“Of course he will, I’m delightful,” Cody says, and Tyson rolls his eyes.

“Easy, buddy,” but he’s happy too, really happy in a way he probably can’t hide all that well.

Tyson’s so happy that he doesn’t even really blink when Cody texts him a few days later and says _I’m bringing a Swiss friend too, deal with it._

_Whatever_ Tyson sends back. _Is he real swiss or a fake Canadian traitor swiss like you ?_

_Real Swiss_ is Cody’s answer, but no other real details, and Tyson doesn’t bother asking because who cares, really? Nate and Brayden are going and Sid’s bringing a friend too so there’s no reason Cody can’t have someone to remind him he’s not just a basic Canadian anymore, oh no, he’s evolved. It’s fine.

In hindsight, Tyson probably should’ve asked.     

 

In a blur of gold confetti, King Kunta, and the kind of hangover that still might just be straight up drunk, Tyson and Nate get ready to leave Prague. A big van shows up outside their hotel at ass o’clock in the morning and the only reason they know it’s for them is because Brayden starts pounding at their door and screaming at them to wake up and get moving or the van’s going to leave them.

“There’s no reason to yell,” Tyson snaps as he yanks the door open on Brayden’s much too cheerful face. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Rude! Come on, we’re meeting Almond at the airport in like 40 minutes, hurry up.”

_How could you sic baby schenn on me_ Tyson texts Cody forlornly after he pulls his pants on backwards and nearly falls over in exhaustion at the thought of starting over on them. Maybe he can make a fashion statement and just leave them as is.

Cody just sends him a string of happy, smiling emojis, which look way too much like Brayden to be bearable at this point, so Tyson throws his phone on the bed and starts on the Herculean task of putting his pants on right.

Then he has to run back to his room and get his phone because he’s left it on the bed, and Nate and Sid and Mike and Brayden all laugh at him in the hallway and life is only pain and suffering.

Against every odd, they make it to the airport and try to find Cody. They make a pit stop at Starbucks and Tyson’s kind enough to remember Cody’s drink (because it’s gross, Americanos are gross) but they’re halfway through the terminal when Tyson remembers Cody’s friend.

“Should I go back and get him something?” Tyson asks Nate, who is blearily clutching his chai and gives Tyson a look like he has no idea what he’s talking about. Tyson can’t blame him; the thought of common courtesy feels as exhausting as the episode with the pants, but he feels bad. “You go on ahead, I’ll grab something,” Tyson says, and they all leave him behind way too easily, making Tyson huff.

Tyson gets the mystery Swiss guy a latte, deciding it’s straightforward and inoffensive enough, and heads to their gate fast enough that the drinks shake a bit in their tray and bubble up through the holes in the lids. He’s cursing himself for not grabbing stoppers and also has to come to a complete stop and gulp down as much of his own mocha as he can before he has to break for breath because going on for another second without caffeine feels like certain death.

Finally, he makes it to the gate, where his group is standing around in a huddle kind of nodding at each other until Tyson gets there. “Hi,” he says, a little out of breath from his pace and his mocha chugging. He gets a group nod, weirdly in sync, and looks around at everyone until—“Oh,” Tyson says, very smooth, blinking at Roman Josi. “It’s you.”

Everyone who knows what Tyson is like laughs, but Roman blinks back at him and screws his face up in an uncertain smile. “Hi? Yes, it’s me,” and Tyson doesn’t quite know how to talk his entire way out of this one, so he just pushes the latte at him.

“I got this for you,” he says, before he realizes how colossally stupid that sounds. He is definitely, positively still drunk from last night and this will be the excuse he uses for a long time. It’ll be an excuse he uses quite a bit on this trip, actually. “I mean—and here, take your disgusting coffee-water, Almond.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Cody says cheerfully, taking the cup from Tyson and looking at him square in the face with an expression that lets Tyson know he’s being laughed at, even though Cody’s not laughing out loud. “So I don’t need to make introductions?”

Tyson rolls his eyes, then turns to include Roman in it, too. “No thanks, we see enough of this guy during the season.”

“Awesome. Ready for our boys trip?”

Brayden goes, “Boys trip!” at a volume that makes Tyson flinch and clutch at his mocha, and he sees Roman’s smile turn small and bemused. Fine. Let him get in on laughing at Tyson; at least he won’t feel left out.

Nate, who is a normal person whose youth helps him recover from hangovers too quickly, manages to give Roman a hard time as they gather themselves together to board. “I really don’t think you’re Canadian enough to make this trip, man. Like there are rules, you know?”

“Too bad,” Roman says. “Cody needs me to balance it out. It can’t be too Canadian, that’s too boring.”

“Yeah, you guys need a little bit of Swiss in you,” Cody says, staring right at Tyson, who flips him right off.

“You’re not even really Swiss,” Tyson says, a line he can spout in his sleep at this point. As if following a practiced cue, Cody whips out his passport and shoves it in Tyson’s face.

“What’s it say on the front, Barrie?”

Tyson doesn’t answer, instead grabbing Cody’s passport out of his hands and throwing it as far as he can from the waiting area. Cody swears and scrambles after it and Nate and Roman both laugh; Tyson drains his mocha and tries not to look too obviously at Roman’s lit-up face and his crinkled eyes.

They pair off on the plane, sitting two in front of the others until Brayden realizes he’s the odd guy out behind Nate and Tyson, and he decides to take out his frustration by kicking the back of Tyson’s seat. “I swear to god,” Tyson says through gritted teeth as Nate just slides his headphones on and peaces out. “I am going to beat you.”

In the seats in front of them, Cody and Roman have their heads bent together, talking in English that still sounds like too much for Tyson’s basic ears. Brayden kicks him again and Tyson groans loudly.

“I hate when I have to sit near babies on a plane.”

In front of him, Roman laughs, and the timing’s right that Tyson can feel pleased about making that happen again. He can feel that warming up his face a bit, and he’s enjoying that until Brayden kicks his seat again.

He twists around, baring his teeth and going, “What do you _want_?”

Brayden smiles at him. He doesn’t have a seatmate so Tyson has no idea what the fuck his damage is. It’s not a long flight and Tyson wants to eat some pretzels and drink expensive plane booze and take a power nap; that’s not too much to ask in light of recent circumstances.

“Hi,” Brayden says, and Tyson unsnaps his seatbelt to reach back and shove Brayden as hard as he can until a stewardess tells him he needs to have his seatbelt on until the light goes off.

Ahead, Roman laughs once more, glancing back at him with Cody. Tyson’s face goes warmer but he finds himself pleased anyway, which probably makes him sick in the head.

“This is gonna be epic,” Nate says, too loud with his headphones on. Brayden kicks the back of his seat again and Roman and Cody turn back around.

Their first night in Cannes does seem to foretell a pretty epic trip, in any case. Cody shuffles them straight from the airport to a hotel to dump their stuff but doesn’t give them any time to rest before they’re being shuffled onto a yacht on the Mediterranean.

For a while it’s just them, enjoying the sun and fully stocked deck and the views of the city as it shrinks on the shoreline. Tyson’s a boat person and always will be so he feels at peace on the water, sinking back on a buttery leather seat and drinking a cold beer he doesn’t have to chug for the first time in what feels like a while. This is nice; this is vacation.

“Okay,” he sighs when Cody drops down next to him, patting his knee. “You did good on this one. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake to bring you along.”

“You never thought that,” Cody says, clinking his beer bottle to where Tyson’s is hanging lazily from his fingers, sweating in the slowly sinking sun.

“Only a hundred times since this morning.” Maybe only since he found out Roman was coming along, though of course that’s no one’s fault but Tyson’s.

“It’s a boys trip, you need your boys here,” Cody tells him.

Tyson makes a face. “Eh. Nate’s good enough. Now if you can toss Brayd overboard, you’re really cooking with gas here.” Cody laughs hard, shakes Tyson by the shoulders, and stands up.

“Just wait. I’ve got something better planned.”

“I seriously can’t imagine anything better than Brayden’s watery death but—sure.”

The something better winds up happening after the sun goes down and they dock but not at their starting point; Cody disappears briefly and then comes back with each of his arms wrapped around two men Tyson doesn’t know, and a whole crowd of strangers dressed in formalwear.

Cody introduces the guys and says, “My friends just got married and I felt bad I couldn’t make the actual wedding but—this is better, right?”

So then their yacht plays host to a fairly large wedding party, with an influx of booze and a DJ materializing out of nowhere and a stream of men and women all speaking different languages and dancing with all of them. It’s fucking awesome, partying out on the water, music and laughter exploding out across the night sky, the city lit up like a painting behind them.

Tyson feels severely underdressed in his t-shirt and shorts but it doesn’t matter once he’s had a few drinks, and after a few drinks more and some more dancing he’s stolen someone’s tuxedo jacket anyway, a few sizes too big on him and smelling musky and French.

He’s wearing this jacket when he wanders further out onto the rear deck of the yacht, when the party has started bunching up below deck because that’s where the DJ went. He’s mostly looking for some air when he spots Roman alone for the first time that night, leaning over the railing of the boat with his arms wrapped around himself.

“Hey,” Tyson calls, and Roman turns a little and nods at him.

“Hey.”

“This isn’t like a Titanic situation, is it?” Tyson asks, and that gets Roman to laugh. Tyson’s drunk enough again to give a little fist in the air celly, dragging his arm inward. He thinks it’s subtle enough that Roman doesn’t notice it. He thinks.

“No, not like that,” Roman says as Tyson steps up next to him. “Just getting some air.”

“Hey, me too,” Tyson says. He’s sweating and too warm but he’s suddenly standing close enough to Roman that he can feel him shivering a little. It’s definitely gotten cold out.

Indeed, Roman says, “Yeah but I’m freezing,” and Tyson laughs. He steps a little closer before he can stop himself, and he feels rather than sees Roman glancing at him.

“Then go inside, dummy. Nice and warm in there.”

“I will,” Roman says. Then he seems to take a breath—Tyson feels it—and says, “It’s nice out here, though,” and Tyson studies the side of his face for a long time, his long nose and his sharp cheekbones, before shuffling minutely closer.

“Yeah, it is.”

There are a few more breaths passed between them, and Cannes bobbing in front of them, an explosion of lights made fuzzy by proximity and alcohol. Tyson, emboldened by champagne and a crisp night, slips the stolen tuxedo jacket off and puts it over Roman’s shoulders.

“Here,” and Roman takes it and turns to smile at him.

“You got this for me?” Roman asks and Tyson smiles back and doesn’t feel like he’s being laughed at and nods, leaning so close there’s really nowhere else to go but—

“Tys!” is the only warning he gets before Brayden barrels into his back, throwing his arms around Roman and Tyson both and hugging them. “What’re you doing, come on, Nate’s been dancing with one of the grooms all night, we gotta shut it down before the other groom sees, let’s go!” 

“For fuck’s sake,” Tyson says, but he leaves with Brayden to find Nate, who’s already been seen to by Sid and Mike of course. And when he goes to head back out Roman’s below deck, still wearing the stolen tux jacket with a fresh drink in his hand; the pink tip of his nose is the only other sign he’d been outside with Tyson. He’s talking to Cody and a group of women, and he catches Tyson’s eye only briefly but long enough to smile, something dark and sweet and a little forbidden in it.

Nate is totally right, Tyson decides. This trip is gonna be epic, for better or worse.    

   

 

It feels like they pour straight out of the yacht into a nightclub, though rationally Tyson knows that there’s sleep and food and some daylight in between. It’s still Cody in charge, dragging them from sweaty, frenetic spot to spot, though at one point Sid does butt in and say he got them into an after party for the film festival the next night.

“A bit more low key,” he yells in Nate’s face over the thumping music, smiling at them a little wryly before Cody drags him off to dance some more. Tyson wants to grab him back and quiz him about who’s going to be there—he’s in the middle of a feverish waking dream about meeting Leo DiCaprio, charming him with his passion for sharks, eloping with him, and being the first person he thanks when he finally wins his Oscar—but before he can go after them, he finds himself being dragged off too.

“Hi,” Roman yells right by his ear, and then quieter once they’ve made it out on a balcony. Tyson smiles at him, his pulse jumping wildly where Roman’s clutching his wrist.

“Hey,” Tyson says, happy to hear himself talk, that he sounds chill enough. He tries, “What’s up?” just to keep that going but his voice shakes a little from the look Roman’s giving him, sharp green eyes blown to black, lip curled in a way that’s vaguely predatory.

“You wanna get out of here?” Roman asks. He doesn’t let go of Tyson’s wrist, and Tyson doesn’t take it away. Nor does he even attempt at playing cool this time, grabbing Roman’s wrist _back_.

“Yeah, hell yeah, let’s go.”

By now, Tyson knows a little bit about Roman beyond his nationality and the NHL team he plays for. He knows Roman likes black coffee and toast when he’s hungover, huffing at the sumptuous brunch they’d all devoured earlier today. He knows that Roman tells quick, weird and slightly dirty jokes unprompted, smiling proudly when he nails a pun or gets an unexpected laugh; he’d smiled harder when it was Tyson.

He knows what the wiry, ropy muscles in Roman’s back look like, where he freckles slightly in the sun, and now what his thin, strong fingers feel like wrapped up tightly in Tyson’s, because they grasp hands on the ride home, accidental but right.

Tyson thinks that’s enough to start kissing Roman as soon as they get his hotel room door closed behind them, so that’s what he does. It’s sloppy and noisy and there’s a distinct lack of chill in it, but he’s fairly certain that Roman doesn’t mind because he kisses back just as hard.

He presses a low, humming laugh between them, nipping at Tyson’s bottom lip before leading him towards one of the beds in the large suite. “Mm, hold on,” Tyson says before they can drop onto it. “That’s Nate’s. Not cool.”

Roman laughs, allowing Tyson to steer him over towards the other bed. They trip over each other’s feet only once, and it’s fine because it prompts them to take their shoes off. “You’re a good friend,” Roman says, smiling bright and sharp. Tyson grins back.

“Well, yeah—” Whatever else he’d been planning to babble gets lost in another hungry kiss; they drop onto the bed and kiss each other breathless, so hard Tyson barely notices Roman’s quick fingers suddenly on his belt.

He definitely notices when his pants are undone and his dick is out and Roman is grinning down at it, then sinking to his knees in front of the bed. “Oh, fuck,” Tyson says as Roman takes him fully in hand and then gets his mouth on him, sucking almost too hard too fast so that Tyson sees stars. “ _Fuck_.”

Roman hums, pulls off to use his hand, then keeps switching off like that, getting Tyson wet and slick and hyped up and then bringing him back to earth carefully every time.

No one should look that fucking sexy and self-assured with a dick in his mouth but Roman looks like a smug cat at every turn, smiling at his handiwork as Tyson’s dick throbs in his grip. His hair is just barely tousled from Tyson’s fingers working in it and his lips are swollen and wet and the whole image just feels like something out of his wildest porn-inspired fantasies, not a real thing that’s actually happening to him.

Then Roman takes him deep, just once, and Tyson goes barreling towards the edge and everything feels very real. It’s very much happening, Tyson is very much coming in Roman’s mouth; Roman is very much pulling himself up into Tyson’s lap and kissing his slack and stupid face, vibrating with heat and need in his loose arms.

Tyson’s a little frantic in getting Roman’s pants open, mostly because he wants to make him feel as good as he feels right now. Roman groans out harshly when Tyson gets a hand on him, and he makes a hurt, needy sound when Tyson spits on his hand and starts stroking him carefully.

It feels kind of fumbling and clumsy at first, but it gets better when Roman squirms until his pants and underwear are mostly off and he’s a bit more naked, on top of Tyson and at a good angle for—Tyson tests, dipping a finger inside him while locking eyes and watching Roman’s eyes flame up before they flutter closed and he drops his head back with a groan.

One more stroke and he goes off in Tyson’s hand with another needy sound, chest heaving. Tyson watches him raptly, every flash of pleasure across his face, and doesn’t stop even when Roman’s eyes open and he looks down at him almost sheepishly.

“Hi,” he says, and Tyson grins so hard his jaw hurts until Roman kisses him again. Then nothing could possibly hurt, not even the places where Roman is giving him all of his weight.

After that, they work on getting the rest of the way undressed and turn down the bed, kissing and groping and passing a water bottle back and forth, then a couple of little bottles from the minibar. Tyson spills cognac on the sheets and whispers, “Oops,” and Roman pushes his face into his shoulder to muffle his laughter.

They wind up giving each other lazy handjobs under the covers after a bit, and they fall asleep without really thinking much of it, the bed strewn with wet spots like landmines and boozy messiness everywhere. It makes morning that much more unwelcome, bright sunlight beaming in through French doors and making everything look that much grosser and seedier, strewn about the opulence of the room.

It also illuminates Nate passed out diagonally across the bed next to them. Tyson notices him when he’s stretching under the sheets that are basically glued to him; he’s thinking about how he needs a shower more than anything else in his life and then he sees Nate.

Roman sits up a little when Tyson freezes in place and looks over at the other bed, then pulls the sheet over his head and hides his face in Tyson’s armpit.

“Five more minutes,” he whisper-groans, and Tyson joins him under the sheet until they’re both sweating too much that kissing doesn’t make it worth it.

They reemerge just as Nate is waking up, bleary-eyed and tousle-haired. “Oh,” he says when he sees that Tyson’s bed has two occupants. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” Tyson and Roman both say at the same time, and then they both crack up, which feels kind of amazing given the circumstances. Even Nate smiles, though he rolls his eyes too and then covers them with his two palms.

“How naked are you guys right now?”

“Extremely,” Tyson says, which sets Roman off again.

“Got it. And since this isn’t a locker room—”

“I know, I know. We both need to shower real bad anyway.”

“Okay, yeah, again, _not a locker room_ , that’s the kind of stuff I don’t need to hear.”

“Sorry,” Tyson says, but he can’t help being really cheerful about it. This probably could’ve gone much worse if Nate wasn’t such a cool guy and if Roman gave a few more fucks here or there, but apparently neither is the case and so it’s relatively smooth sailing that morning.

There’s no announcement or proclamation at breakfast with the rest of the guys and so it’s smooth sailing from there, too. At that point, only Nate _knows_ and Tyson is grateful if only because he’s not sure if there’s going to be anything else to know; in situations like this he tends to play it by ear, and he doesn’t want to hear anything that isn’t there yet.

Nothing would get decided at a crowded brunch spot outside on the Croisette, overlooking the ever-present water and drenched in sunlight. It’s back to just being a boys trip in those moments, sitting next to Roman simply because that’s how they’d lined up, and they plan out their day and eat buttery, salty breakfast foods together without saying much of anything to each other.

“You tagged out early last night, eh?” Cody says to Roman in the closest anyone gets to actually broaching the subject. Roman has his face stuffed with croissant and shrugs noncommittally and that’s that, really, until after brunch when they head to the beach and Roman drops down on Tyson’s towel when he’s thinking about taking a nap behind his sunglasses.

“Are you sleeping yet?” Roman asks, voice a little soft like he’s actually being considerate of the fact that Tyson might be sleeping. Tyson sits up in response and Roman shifts very close, too warm again but Tyson can’t possibly mind. “Is this okay?”

It’s a private beach so sparsely populated, but all the guys are here—Brayden in the water with Cody on his shoulders, trying to convince Nate to take them both on at once in a twisted game of chicken; Mike and Sid a bit of a ways down the beach, lazily knocking a cheap inflatable beach ball at each other. They can all see them.

Tyson pushes his sunglasses up and cocks his head towards the others. “Is _that_ okay?” and Roman shrugs again.

“We’re on vacation. Nobody cares.” And Roman lies down on Tyson’s towel, taking up way too much of it, smiling up at the face Tyson makes and then coaxing him to lie down with his head on Roman’s chest. “Go to sleep,” Roman says, and Tyson closes his eyes and tries to.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” he says instead, and Roman hums. He has his fingers in Tyson’s hair.

“Really? You never do things like this?”

“Not on vacation with a bunch of hockey guys, no,” Tyson says, laughing softly. He keeps his eyes closed.

“Hmm. Not even with the hockey guys?”

Tyson opens his eyes at that, glancing up at Roman. From this angle, all he can see is the tip of his long nose, a little burnt already, and the slight jut of his sharp chin. Roman isn’t looking at him but when Tyson follows his gaze, he’s looking at Cody.

“That was a long time ago,” Tyson says, shrugging. “Ancient history.”

“That’s not why you asked him to come?”

“I didn’t ask him to come.” Tyson laughs a little; this conversation feels little surreal, and he’s wondering pretty hard why Roman cares, but he’s also pleased that he does. It’s a visceral, selfish little pleasure and he feels like he’s glowing with it. “He invited himself. He invited _you_ without asking.”

Roman hums, his fingers shifting across Tyson’s scalp, soft and gentle but tugging a bit when they stray too far. Tyson leans into the touch. “You’re not complaining, are you?”

“Not now I’m not,” Tyson says, probably too dreamy, but that’s okay. Roman laughs and he sounds pleased, too, and it’s an easy sort of peace borne of equal footing. Tyson’s thrilled.

He dozes lightly under Roman’s fingers until he feels footsteps stomping through the sand nearby and feels a shallow splash of water drop onto him. The bulk of it gets Roman’s chest but it’s enough on Tyson’s face that he wakes up and lifts narrowed eyes up at Cody, beaming down at them.

“That was _fast_.”

“Eat me, Almond,” Tyson says, making Cody crack up.

“Maybe some other time, you seem pretty busy right now.”

“Do you need something?” Roman asks, even managing a haughty sort of sniff at him. Tyson has to ask him to teach him that, though he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have the look for it.

“Nope, just saying hey. Hey, do you think Nate’ll mind if we switch rooms?”

“He’ll definitely mind,” Tyson says, but the thought of having constant access to Roman’s bare skin for the rest of this trip sounds absurdly appealing, especially now that he knows this is apparently more than a one-time thing. He thinks that maybe he’ll have that anyway, though, that maybe Roman wants that just as much, so there’s no need for musical room chairs. Probably.

“I think we can keep things the way they are,” Roman says as if reading Tyson’s mind. He pulls his fingers out of Tyson’s hair and when Tyson looks back at him, he has his arms folded behind his head, very relaxed and unbothered. He even winks. “We won’t disturb you.”

“You say that now but I know how loud this one gets,” Cody says, plopping down on the sand next to them heedless of Tyson’s protesting groans.

“Listen, we literally just went over this,” Tyson says, regrettably sitting up. “You don’t have to make this a drama.”

“But you love drama.” What goes unsaid is that Cody loves drama too, which is the biggest part of why he’d been appealing when Tyson was very young and very new. That’s the entire reason he’s over here and Tyson is as wary of it now as he’d been back in Kelowna. He’d learned afterward that not every hookup with every guy had to be like that, and there could be good, chill hookups too.

He’s really, really hoping that this one stays one of those.

“There’s no drama,” Roman says calmly, easing a worry that had started to bloom in the pit of Tyson’s stomach. “Relax. We’re just having fun on vacation.”

“Exactly,” Tyson says. Cody beams again and gives a stupid little salute.

“Well, you’re welcome—” Cody starts, and Tyson and Roman both groan.

“Oh stop it,” Roman says, but Cody barrels on.

“No need to thank me, just let me make a speech at your wedding—”

“Jesus Christ Almond, get out of here!” Tyson says, his face burning the hell up. Roman is laughing kind of helplessly, and of course Cody keeps going.

“—and definitely name your first kid after me—”

And Tyson leaves his relatively peaceful spot on Roman’s chest to tackle Cody’s legs until he’s down on the sand, wrestling with him while Roman goes, “Get him!” and waves at them lazily.

No one else has a reaction as involved as Cody; Sid and Mike barely acknowledge anything and Brayden just goes, “Dude, score!” and high-fives Tyson after Roman has left the van back at the hotel and they’re waiting for Nate to get out to follow. That means Tyson is totally justified in confronting Cody later, when they’re wandering in and out of each other’s rooms to look at each other’s clothes as they get ready for the party.

“Seriously?” Tyson asks when Cody’s in their room, browsing Tyson’s jackets and shaking his head. Nate’s brushing his teeth and watching them curiously. “Our wedding? What is wrong with you?”

Cody grins, shaking his head. “Come on, you know I was just kidding. I know it’s not like that.”

“Yeah, thanks, at least you’re not a total idiot. But you don’t have to joke about _everything_ , you know?” Tyson knows he probably should drop it—he knows Cody was just being a dick but not in a truly mean way, just in a general dick way—but something about the slick, oily feeling of embarrassment he’d felt just isn’t going away.

Because, yes, this is just a chill, fun thing to do on vacation. Tyson has no issue with that. He welcomes that. There’s never any expectation of more from this kind of stuff, at least not on Tyson’s end. It’s fine. But to be reminded of it a lot isn’t always fun, not just because it gets him thinking about the what-ifs—and he’s not that fucking desperate, geez, he’s been banging Roman for two minutes, he’s not picking out china yet or anything—but because it reminds him of why those what-ifs are off the table, why they’re so fucking ridiculous and crazy. It’s really not fun.

Case in point, Cody rolls his eyes. “Relax, man. I know he’s not going to fucking marry _you_ , he has a—there’s someone, okay? So you don’t have to freak out about it.”

Tyson rolls his eyes too, because Cody didn’t have to tell him _that_ , either. “Great. There’s someone. Awesome. Let’s keep joking about it for sure, not awkward at all.”

“Is Tys really a side piece?” Nate asks, cutting Cody off. Tyson doesn’t actually yell _thank you_ in his face like he wants to, but he does shoot him a grateful glance; he gets a shrug in response, and Nate is awesome.

Cody throws his hands up. “Jesus, none of this is the big deal you’re making it out to be. They’re not a thing right now so definitely relax, but I’m just saying—she exists so I know what the deal is. I know how this works.”

“Yeah, me too,” Tyson says bitterly, and they just both kind of sit on Tyson’s bed for a bit until Nate gets them arguing about whether or not his hat is Cannes Film Festival appropriate. And then things are better.     

 

Leo DiCaprio is not at the party they go to, so there will be no elopement that night, but Tyson spends a lot of time looking anyway, just in case. He’s upfront with Roman about who he’s looking for and why, and Roman trails after him, grinning and saying hi to everyone in the exact same tone of voice no matter how famous they are.

“No Leo,” Roman finally says after a while; they’ve broken off from their group and have had more than a little wine. “Sorry about your dreams, man.”

“Typical,” Tyson sighs, leading Roman out onto a balcony because it feels right; because Roman is beautiful and even more than that under a thick blanket of stars.

Roman takes his hand. “Should we do the Titanic thing just in case?” and Tyson blinks at him.

“What? Like have sex in a car?” They _are_ headed to Monaco for the Grand Prix soon, but—a slow, silky sort of smile is curling over Roman’s face. “ _What_?”

“No, I don’t know,” Roman says, and then he leans in and whispers, “I’ve never seen Titanic.”

Tyson barks out a high, huffing laugh, surprised and exhilarated. “What! How can you not—”

Roman cuts him off by pressing a kiss to his mouth, slipping his tongue between his lips, and laughing when Tyson kind of splutters. “Sorry. It’s very long.”

“Don’t say that too loud at a film festival party,” Tyson says, and then he adds, “Come on, I don’t care how long it is,” and leads Roman out.

They don’t have sex in the car back to the hotel. Their cab driver is elderly and speaks to them in French; Roman answers back with only some hesitation and Tyson looks at the city outside the car window and listens to them, not understanding and enjoying it for once.

They _do_ have sex halfway through watching Titanic on Tyson’s iPad, because Roman gets bored like he’d almost promised he would and they’re lying very close together under the sheets on Tyson’s hotel bed. Tyson manages one meager protest that Roman swallows up in kisses, and then there’s absolutely no way he could manage to protest them being naked and curled up against each other, getting hard at a soft, lazy pace like even their sex drive is on vacation.

Things do pick up when Roman finds lube, when Tyson fingers him open until he’s gasping and panting. There’s nothing for Roman to leave a steamy handprint on when Tyson fucks him; the mirror is too far away, though on their sides like this Tyson can glance at it and see what they look like, sweaty and practically melded together. Their movements seem minute in their reflection even though every bit of Tyson’s body is groaning with frenzied pleasure and exertion, and after Roman comes Tyson stops looking at the mirror so he doesn’t see himself follow.

They fool around a bit more, sloppy and tired, and the bulk of the afterglow plays out alongside Titanic’s tragic ending, Roman watching with his head on Tyson’s chest, his fingers stroking gently along his stomach. “This is sad,” Roman huffs, and Tyson rolls his eyes.

“Well, yeah, that’s the point.” If his eyes are wet he can blame the orgasms, though the look Roman shoots him suggests he’s not buying it. “It’s beautiful.”

“Um, if you say so,” Roman says, and then just to fully break the peace: “Why doesn’t she just let him on the—”

“Oh no,” Tyson says, groping for the unused pillow next to him and putting it over his own face. “I’m not starting this with you.”

“Starting what? It doesn’t make sense, Tyson!”

“Are you sure you’ve never seen this before?” Tyson asks into the pillow, and Roman sits up and pulls the pillow off and looks down at him, eyes bright.

“ _No_ , I’ve never seen this before.” He sniffs. “Smart thinking of me, too.”

“What, come on, you didn’t see half the movie!”

Roman smiles at him and leans down. “I was busy,” he mutters and he kisses Tyson wetly, kisses where his cheeks are damp and red, until the door to their room opens and Nate stumbles in with his eyes covered.

“Hello, I’m here, clothes on please, are you—is that Titanic? Gross.”

“It’s beautiful, apparently,” Roman says, rolling his eyes at Tyson when he sits up again. Tyson rolls his eyes back but accepts one last kiss before Roman gets up and goes back to his room wrapped in a sheet with his clothes tucked under his armpits.

“You’re disgusting,” Nate says when Roman leaves, and Tyson rolls his eyes and stumbles into the bathroom without covering up to retaliate.

“Don’t be rude, Nate.”

“Seriously, Titanic? Did you cry? You cried again, didn’t you.”

“Eat me,” Tyson says, turning on the shower, and he busts out a loud laugh when he hears Nate mutter, “No way, I know where you’ve been.”

 

It occurs to Tyson somewhere in Nice that Nate might have a point about being disgusting, though. They’ve been on another yacht, another beach, and today he and Roman broke off from Nate, Cody and Brayden to head up the stairs at Castle Hill with Sid and Mike. They’re going to have a picnic.

“Why did we do this?” Tyson pants halfway up, wiping sweat from his eyes so he can see Roman’s smirk more clearly. Sid and Mike are dots up ahead, outpacing them way too much considering one of them is a goddamn goalie.

Roman’s hand is sweaty, too, which is kind of gratifying, even if Tyson can’t quite figure out why they’re still holding hands. That’s the part where he thinks Nate might be right.

“We wanted some time alone,” Roman reminds him. “Come on. We’re almost there.”

“We can have time alone in the hot tub,” Tyson says, but yeah, when they get to the first lookout they get hit with an insane view of Nice spread out across the water, colorful buildings bursting across the vibrant landscape. They lose Sid and Mike to ruins and waterfalls and keep going until they hit a park tucked behind another ridiculous view, and Tyson takes a big breath as Roman spreads a light blanket across a shady patch of grass. “Okay. Worth it.”

Roman smiles now and takes Tyson’s hand again; he kisses his knuckles and Tyson hears Nate’s voice going _gross_ again as clearly as if he’s here with them. They drink wine and eat strawberries and sandwiches and Roman eventually says, “We’ll take the elevator down, idiot,” and Tyson feels something tighten in his stomach, a good and bad feeling at the same time.

He ignores the feeling through the sunset, which is just as sickeningly gorgeous as the rest of this stupid scene. Roman finishes the strawberries and says, “Oops,” when Tyson goes for one but he doesn’t look very sorry, his lips in a tight smirk; they taste sweet and feel a little grainy when Tyson goes in for an annoyed kiss, quick and sharp. “They’re just so good. So small.” He’d been going two at a time and Tyson can respect that even as he suffers the consequences.

“You even ate the leaves, man. You’re supposed to leave those!”

“Whatever.” Roman laughs when Tyson shoves him, and he buys him strawberry ice cream when they’re back by their hotel with Sid and Mike, up ahead of them this time and bumping into each other when Roman keeps leaning in for spare licks of it.

“You’re ridiculous,” Tyson says when they separate to head back to their rooms. He’s expecting Roman to just knock on his room door a little while later so they can have sex, but when that doesn’t happen for a while and instead Nate gets back from dinner, tipsy and somehow sunburned again like there’s any patch of skin left on his body that hasn’t been burned, Tyson frowns.

“What?” Nate asks, and Tyson looks around him at the door to their room. “Oh, wow. Sorry I can’t be him.”

“Stop it, I just—today was weird,” Tyson says, and that’s the most he really can articulate, even when Nate looks curious but doesn’t press. It kind of feels like Roman dropped him off after a date, which is so absurd Tyson tries steering his brain in the other direction: maybe Roman is sick of banging him. That feels more plausible than the other idea, so he broods on that all night until Roman wakes him up at dawn and whispers, “Let’s go swimming,” and then they’re naked in the still-cool sea, their already private beach deserted this early out there.

Roman makes something of a privacy fort out of several large beach umbrellas and they have sex on a lounger, sticking to each other with salt and sweat and trying to be quiet in the softly waking morning.

Afterwards, Tyson feels good and warm and hungry and confused, and he wants to ask questions: what was yesterday about? What are they doing? But Roman dozes until Tyson’s stomach is too empty to ignore, and they get dressed and find the others with their fingers tangled together and pebbly sand all over their clothes and in their hair.

No one bats an eye at this point and Tyson is struck by that, too. The freedom of being together in something like public is one thing; they had gone on what all signs point to being a date in a crowded, public tourist spot but Tyson doesn’t think it’s weird that that had been invisible. He’s not all that famous and neither is Roman and neither of them are home. They can do what they want here and not really worry. That’s not the part that makes Tyson’s stomach flip.

But for basically his entire life Tyson has known to be careful in a group of hockey players, even in a group that’s his team. The surreal part of this is how this group is a bunch that he can trust; that he and Roman can’t stop touching each other, and he’s so aware of how much touching they do around everyone, but nobody cares. And really, the only wildcard in the group would’ve been Roman, who might be trying to date him. Maybe. Probably not.

Tyson has done lots of things with lots of guys, hockey players or not. But this whatever with Roman is the most freedom he’s ever, ever had with another guy. It’s exhilarating and terrifying. He could never have imagined it, and definitely not with _Roman_.

They never talk about that or about what they’re doing but Tyson thinks about it more, which is probably against the rules for a summer fling. He tries to temper everything with that reminder, reinforcing those boundaries—this almost certainly ends the moment they step foot on North American soil again, it has to, no matter what Tyson wants—but sometimes it’s hard. It just gets harder as he gets to know Roman more.

They watch tennis in a bar in the middle of the day with Cody; Roman can’t stop talking about Roger Federer and Tyson says, “Okay, so he’s your Leo DiCaprio,” and Roman twists his face up in annoyance.

“What, no, it’s not the same.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It’s just different!” His nose is all scrunched up and Tyson wants to kiss it, then does it on a whim, feeling shaky and thrilled with his own daring.

It seems to make Roman happy, even as he keeps shaking his head. “Oh no. You can’t distract me like that. Take it back.”

“It wasn’t an insult, I was just saying—”

“They’re your hall passes,” Cody cuts in, and absolutely no one fucking asked. Tyson hopes the look he gives Cody conveys that properly. Roman blinks at him.

“What?”

“Like, there’s one other guy Tyson can bone and that’s Leo. For you it’s Roger. So you can break the rules for them but that’s it. Makes sense?”

“I know what it means, idiot,” Roman says, and he manages to infuse the word _idiot_ with such contempt that Tyson might swoon a little once he has a few more drinks. He loves when Roman gets bitchy at other people, and kind of also at him. “But how is that—”

“It’s not applicable here,” Tyson says before this takes a painful turn; he ignores the slightly puzzled look Roman shoots him and gives him a smile. “You can fuck Federer, and you can fuck Nadal—” And he stops, laughing hard as Roman shoves him, outraged.

“I would _never_ , how could you even say that!”

“Fine, Murray, whoever—look I don’t know that many tennis players, take it easy.” That’s the wrong thing to say because then Roman talks his ear off about tennis for the rest of the afternoon; they ignore the actual match and drink and talk to each other, and at the end of it Tyson has to swear to play some tennis with Roman sometime and also might have to take a quiz on every male tennis player Roman might and might not want to fuck.

So maybe it was actually the right thing to say, especially since they go back to the hotel instead of going out to dinner with the boys and fuck the whole time Cody’s out. Roman shoves Tyson’s face into the sheets while he fucks him with short, hard thrusts, making these little grunts that could sound frustrated if this wasn’t what they were doing.

A bit after they both come, Tyson flips over and, still panting, asks, “So which one were you imagining—fuck, stop it!” and Roman twists his nipple viciously and sits on top of his waist, grinning wickedly down at him as Tyson laughs and moans.

Roman stops twisting and just sort of looks down at him some more, but he doesn’t let go of Tyson’s nipple. Then he pinches the other one in his fingers too, and Tyson can feel himself getting hard again and can feel Roman feeling it too, considering where he’s sitting. Tyson shifts his hips and groans and says, “You’re gonna kill me.”

“That’s my master plan,” Roman says with an exaggerated, dramatic deepness to his voice; his accent gets thicker and he has to hide a smile and Tyson lies there, looking up at him, letting him tug and work at his nipples until he’s fucking hard again and squirming needily and ready to ask to get fucked at least one more time.

For a while he thinks Roman’s going to make him ask, until he shifts back and ruts between Tyson’s thighs and then fumbles for a new condom and slides right back home, making Tyson’s breath catch and choke up in his throat.

Roman fucks him slower this time, picking up his legs and looking sharply at Tyson’s chest until he takes the hint and plays with his own nipples, blushing red all over, hot and embarrassed and quickly feeling overwhelmed.

Roman’s not exactly a talker during sex, but his sounds are different this time—a bit more smug, sighs and “Mmm,” like Tyson’s falling in line nicely and that’s good for Roman. In between the suffocating waves of heat and exhaustive pleasure, Tyson has to marvel at how little they need to talk about this part of things, how sex just makes a quick, certain sense with so little said or done to make sense of it.

He understands Roman best in these moments: when he closes his eyes and pushes in deeper and harder, his lips twitching happily when Tyson makes gutted groans. Here is where all of the best parts of Roman—his weird and ridiculous sense of humor, his easygoing nature tangled up with his occasional moodiness, the way he can be both aloof and overwhelmingly present in every room he’s in—feel like they’re just for Tyson, like he doesn’t have to share, and it feels—that’s what’s good for Tyson.

Tyson comes even harder than before and then he’s abruptly exhausted, slumping back against the sheets and letting his limbs turn to jelly as Roman pushes hard for his own release.

There’s a pleasant soreness between his legs when Roman gets there and then pulls away after a few heavy caught breaths, and he doesn’t move even while Roman does, getting rid of the second condom, cleaning them both up a little, kissing Tyson on the cheek in one of those weird spurts of sweetness he gets; he tweaks his sore nipples one last time, too, just to remind Tyson of what he’s really like, and Tyson looks up at him and swallows hard but can’t think of anything to really say.

He winds up stumbling back to his and Nate’s room not long after, saying he wants to change. He takes some time alone in there, in the bathroom and then on his own bed, just kind of getting his bearings and shoving down the excess feelings he has spilling out of his chest like a fucking jack-in-the-box; if his heart was a suitcase, Tyson thinks he’d need to sit on it to get it to close right now, which is just typical.

Tyson’s phone dings with a text and he checks it and sees the first actual instance of Roman texting him: _When you’re ready you want to get food?_

Tyson puts his face in his hands and laughs hard because yeah, they skipped dinner. And yeah, he’s gonna go get food with Roman. Why not?

   

Nothing actually changes between them, which is how Tyson comes to believe in his heart that the whole thing is certainly doomed. There are no dramatic, deep discussions of feelings; Tyson does his best not to let on that he sometimes feels like he’s going to vomit in the quiet moments that he and Roman have together and that’s in a good yet horrible way. He thinks he mostly succeeds.

The reality is it’s been like two weeks, so that feeling is utterly ridiculous and Tyson knows it. That reality does nothing to actually squash that feeling but whatever, Tyson was born to suffer.

He allows himself one night, their last night in Nice, when they’ve all been drinking too much together and Roman is probably going to collect him soon because that’s what they do, but not yet—one night where he wallows a bit and tells Nate and Brayden what kind of trouble he’s in.

“Don’t tell Almond,” Tyson says, and Brayden crosses over his heart in a way that makes Tyson start considering how hard it would be to hit him over the head until he forgets this discussion ever happened, because he doesn’t quite trust him.

He trusts Nate, though, which might be another symptom of all that’s wrong with him, because he’s known Brayden for way longer than he’s known Nate and should therefore trust him more. But Brayden is friends with Cody too and they know all too well that the entire Kelowna web is leaky and gossipy and obsessed with itself way too much, so. The problem is that Tyson never learns.

“I don’t really see what the big deal is,” Brayden says, rolling his eyes. They’re at a hotel, not theirs but something with a rooftop, looking down on a large pool dotted with people at their party. It’s not that far down; maybe Tyson can just jump and then come back up and take a mulligan on this entire discussion. They can discuss how Tyson’s clothes are all wet instead of how his heart is all embarrassing. “You’re all over each other. He’s clearly into you.”

“Have you even talked to him?” Nate asks. Poor, sweet young Nate, who just had his first Adult Breakup a few weeks ago. Tyson pats him on the head.

“That’s a big nope, Dogg. That’s not happening.”

“Why?” Nate asks, and Brayden snorts.

“Tyson loves the drama. There’s no drama if he just goes and talks to Josi like a normal human being.”

“ _Or_ there’s way too much drama and I fuck up a good thing that could last another couple days by being an idiot about it,” Tyson says, and Nate at least seems to accept that, even if Brayden rolls his eyes.

“I mean, either you find out where you both stand or you get over it,” Brayden says, and that’s how Tyson knows he’s been drinking wine instead of the champagne and beer they’ve all been downing. Brayden always ages about 10 years when he drinks wine. He narrows his eyes at Tyson, smirking at him like some fucking know-it-all. “How good are you at getting over stuff again?”

“Fuck you, Brayd,” Tyson says with feeling, and then he jumps when he feels two arms loop around his waist from behind.

“Yeah, fuck you, Brayd,” Roman says, and Tyson can feel his smile against his neck.

Brayden throws his hands up, eyes sparkling in a way that makes Tyson sweat until they lock eyes and Brayden nods slightly and starts backing off. “Not tonight, he’s all yours.”

“Yeah,” Roman says in the same accusatory voice, this time turned onto Tyson, like Tyson is in any position to argue that.

The night ends just like most of their nights in France have ended: together, in bed, having sex and talking a little until they both fall asleep. Roman drifts off first this time and Tyson stays up looking at him like a creep, the warm and painful feeling welling up inside of him like a balloon he wishes would fucking pop and choke him already.

He kind of wants to go and find Nate, wants to hear “You should just talk to him,” over and over again until he gets brave enough to be that naïve and stupid, but he won’t leave this bed.

Monaco lies ahead, and with it the Grand Prix and nights at Monte Carlo and the last of Tyson’s time with Roman. Tyson wants to gather these days to his chest and hold onto them against anything that comes his way and that’s why he doesn’t talk to Roman, not when he knows what Roman’s probably going to say.

The thing is that he’s done this before, and it’s how it goes with hockey players. That’s what Nate doesn’t know yet, can’t possibly know, and Brayden should fucking know better. Maybe Sid does but god knows Tyson isn’t going to go there for anything, and Cody would know but it’s too tied up for that, too connected.

Any hockey player that’s ever fucked another hockey player knows how these things go, and so much of what they’ve done on this trip has defied that already that Tyson knows they couldn’t possibly push it further. It’s just not how these things work.

So they drink some more in Monaco and have more sex. Tyson knows how luck works for the men in his family so he doesn’t gamble much, but he lets Roman goad him into a few rounds of blackjack and doesn’t feel so bad when he loses too much money because Roman takes him to the bar and buys him sweet drinks and kisses him hard in the elevator up to Tyson’s room.

“Guess my luck is turning around,” Tyson says, and Roman looks pleased. They have sex in the hot tub, feeding each other chocolates that melt in their fingers and on their lips until Cody busts into the room and yells at them to get dressed, they’re going out again.

There’s a lot of sweaty dancing, more drinking and a little extra. In the daylight, they go to the beach or head to the race and Tyson likes cars and pretends he knows more about them than he does, and Roman either humors him or doesn’t know enough to know he’s full of shit or maybe a little of both, because it works.

Monaco is glitz and decadence and Roman takes to it like a fish to water. It sometimes feels like they have less time alone because they’re spending so much time in fancy restaurants or clubs or private, secret parties where they have to wear masks or say a password, and somehow Cody or Roman always know the password while the rest of them bumble in after them like a bunch of Canadian hicks.

Nate tries absinthe for the first time and that’s a whole night; they lose Brayden for a whole day in the fucking aquarium, which was his idea in the first place. He pops up again long after they’ve given up searching for him and have gone out to their second club of the night and find him there dancing with a bunch of strangers: “Oh hey!” Brayden says, and introduces them all.

In a sense, it feels like days are flipping past at the speed of light, and Tyson starts getting the gnawing, unwelcome feeling that any time not spent in bed with Roman is wasted, even if he’s ostensibly enjoying himself.

Part of him wants to go back to Nice, wants to dive deep into a tourist trap with Roman until it feels like they’re the only people left in the world. He wants to go back to Cannes and get lost on the Mediterranean, to spend the rest of the summer and maybe his life on a boat with Roman in his arms and the city lights smudged all over the sea around them, dipping and cresting with the tide.

But he doesn’t have a time machine so he can’t do that, so he takes what he can get and tries to enjoy it. Stolen kisses at breakfast, half the thrill of doing it in front of the guys who still don’t care—and Tyson wonders if he’ll ever have _that_ again, a notion that pulls at his chest just as surely as Roman does.

On their last night in Monaco, their last night of vacation, they all go out to dinner together and then drinking but Tyson says, “Hey, you wanna cut out early?” and Roman takes his hand as an answer.     

Instead of heading right back to the hotel like Tyson had intended, though, Roman leads them for a walk through the night air, still holding Tyson’s hand, and Tyson comes so very close to saying, “Man, I’m gonna miss that.” He can’t imagine the next time he’s going to get to hold a guy’s hand. He thinks he’ll get to hold someone’s dick before he gets to hold his hand.

Rather than embarrassing himself he just says stuff like, “It’s really nice out,” and “I need to find a place that does red snapper like that back home,” and Roman hums and listens to him babble and then says, carefully, “So where are you headed after this?”

“The hotel to fuck you,” Tyson says promptly, and Roman’s laugh is short and sharp, his teeth gleaming in the streetlamp light.

“I mean after France. Are you going home next?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Tyson answers, shrugging. “I’ve got friends to see and stuff, and my sister. Couple of weddings.”

“Nice.” There’s pointedly nothing in Roman’s voice when he says that, but Tyson can’t help searching for something anyway, his pulse flittering nervously under his skin.

“What about you?”

“Ah, I think I’m going to California,” Roman says, giving Tyson a grin. “Do you go there?”

Instead of demanding, “Why?” or blurting out, “I totally could, tell me to go there right now,” Tyson just laughs and says, “It’s a big state, eh? Where in California?”

“LA. I like it. Just for a bit, do some training I think, see some friends, then I’ll go back to Bern for my family before the season. It’ll be nice.” He looks at Tyson a bit sideways, his grin softening into something smaller. “If you go, you should text me.”

“Should I?” Tyson asks, his heart pounding through his fucking throat.

“You should,” Roman says, and he gives Tyson’s hand a squeeze. “I think that would be fun.”

All of Tyson’s heart, soul and dick come together to agree with that, even if his brain is going, “You dumbass, there’s someone else, why else would he go to LA?” Tyson ignores his brain as per usual. He says, “So you just want vacation to last forever, huh?” and Roman barks out a laugh.

“That would be nice,” Roman says, and he kisses Tyson in front of their hotel, his hands on Tyson’s face, Tyson’s arms around his waist.

The night ends just like most of their nights in France have ended, except this time Tyson doesn’t fall asleep. He likes awake with his heart pounding, thinking about LA and how much seems foolishly possible in the dark cool night, still in bed with Roman.

When the sun creeps up and they have to get up, Tyson hasn’t slept but he’s not tired, too jittery for that. He looks at Roman for what feels like will be the last time and thinks _but what if it isn’t?_

Of course it isn’t, Tyson reasons on the plane, sitting with Nate again until they have to leave him on an East Coast pit stop while they trek on west. Tyson’s sitting low in his seat, eyes burning—Roman is sitting behind him and Tyson will certainly, definitely see him again.

They play hockey against each other, after all.

 

**Interlude: When in sardinia, france @tysonbarrie4**   
_2015-2016_

Tyson gets back to Denver a bit early to help Nate move into Factor’s old condo. He pays little mind to his own place—it’s another rental and he has to buy stuff for it but how much stuff does he really need, anyway?

It’s a big deal for Nate, though, who will ostensibly be living on his own for the first time basically ever. He seems excited and nervous about it, telling his parents to stay away for the first few weeks but not really letting Tyson leave much. Tyson isn’t going to say he minds the company, and Nate is his best friend, so it all works out.

Eventually, though, Tyson is supplanted by Nate’s family sometime around November, because he can use the Postmates app but he can’t really do laundry and so he’s never going to replace Nate’s mom in that category. He spends several hours after practice one day trying to help Nate clean the condo enough that it’s respectable and won’t send his mom running and screaming before she can actually do the laundry, then gets tired of it and flops on the couch while Nate curses at his Swiffer.

“Let’s just find a service,” Tyson says, reading reviews of chore apps on his phone. Nate gives him a dirty look.

“They’re literally going to be here in like 10 hours, where was this idea yesterday? You’re useless.”

“Excuse me? I’ve been supporting you this entire time, I’ve been with you every step of the way on your journey to independence— _I_ threw out the burrito bowl that you left in the fridge from preseason—”

“That was your burrito bowl!” Nate yells.

Long story short, Tyson winds up leaving mad and going to his own, slightly musty-smelling apartment, which is ridiculous because he has an actual service come and clean like an actual real adult does. He pouts on his own couch for a while, gets bored, and then asks the team group text if anyone wants to get a drink with him.

_Fuck u_ says Nate immediately, so Tyson amends _not nathan_ and gets several rows of middle finger emojis in response.

After those die down, though, there’s Gabe saying he’s bored and willing, and Mitchy too, even though he’s married so that’s kind of depressing. So Tyson meets them at their usual spot and even generously buys a round to show his gratitude, and Gabe laughs at him.

“Are you trying to make new friends?”

“What the hell, man,” Tyson says, scowling. “We’re already friends! I’m insulted.”

“You know what I mean. Listen, we’re not going to be Nate replacements. You can’t be at my house 24/7 like you’re at his, I have standards.” Gabe’s grinning widely at him, belying his harsh and cruel words, and Tyson keeps scowling.

“I didn’t ask to go to your house, Gabriel. Who says I want to? I have my own place, it’s way nicer than yours.”

“Yeah I doubt that,” Mitchy says, and of course Tyson’s just getting ganged up on in his time of need.

They have a few more drinks, they keep ripping Tyson, it’s all pretty standard. Tyson’s made up about 15 different positive features of his apartment and Gabe doesn’t believe any of them are real but when they split an Uber back from the bar Gabe says, “Let me see your fucking koi pond, man,” and Tyson laughs at him and says no but thinks, for the rest of the ride, about the growly sort of note in Gabe’s voice, the teasing and the attention.

He shakes it off once Gabe is gone and files it neatly away in a _dead dove – do not eat_ portion of his brain before he goes to bed. None of that’s anything to dwell on. Gabe is his friend, no matter what he says. And he could never be a Nate replacement, that’s not even possible.

Nate and Tyson are over the burrito bowl fight within the next day or so, but Tyson still finds himself home more often, bored more often, and subsequently out with the guys a bit more often. Gabe is always down to go out to drink with him and that fact is noted and dismissed and it’s kind of fun, hanging out with the guys a bit more instead of spending so much of his free time on Nate’s couch.

It’s not like he and Nate never had fun with everyone all the time, but Nate’s definitely a homebody more than anything else and Tyson tends to wither and shrivel up if he doesn’t go out enough so the little break from each other kind of works. They’re still best friends.

Maybe it’s time Tyson went on his own journey to independence.

He buys some home essentials: a blender specifically for margaritas and a big leafy plant he regrets naming and forming an emotional attachment to when it dies within a week, but whatever. It was an attempt. “Why did you buy a plant in the middle of November,” Gabe asks when Tyson sadly reports the loss at a team dinner on the road. “What is wrong with you?”

“That’s not the point, the point is it’s sad,” Nate says, which is why Gabe could never hope to replace him. “To Wes!”

“To Wes!” only Tyson and Mitchy echo, because the rest of the team thinks they’re ridiculous and are dismissive and disloyal.

Tyson tries to make Nanaimo bars to bring to Gabe’s birthday party, because it’s in his house instead of at a bar, probably to shame Tyson. The recipe he has says it’s super easy, though he decides that’s entirely inaccurate about a half hour into working on it, but at that point he’s determined to see this through. If he can make cookie cups, he can make these stupid bars, which is really just mixing stuff and pouring the mixtures on top of each other.  

He uses the blender because he doesn’t have a stand mixer but he’s sure it’ll be all right; the custard layer comes out super thin and runny as a result but it tastes fine so he’s sure it will work out. The end product is thin and the layers are all muddied up but it’s a respectable attempt, he thinks.

Halfway to Gabe’s house, Tyson throws the container of Nanaimo bars in the backseat and just stops at a fucking bakery. He buys up half the display of pastries and carries them in a stack up Gabe’s walkway; they’re gone in like 15 minutes at the party and forgotten about once everybody gets sloppy wasted anyway, and then the next day Tyson crawls out from the spot on Gabe’s living room floor where he’d passed out after too many shots of Swedish fish-flavored vodka and sits in the backseat of his car and eats half the container. It’s like, noon.

Gabe finds him there and squints in at him, eyes bloodshot. Tyson leans over and opens the backseat door in invitation and Gabe kind of shrugs and gets in and takes a cracked, too-thin bar.

“How’s it feel to be 23?” Tyson asks for lack of anything better to say. He’s still a little drunk, and it’s not like he wants or is capable of explaining what he’s doing right now.

Gabe seems to think about it for a minute, chewing longer than is probably necessary for these things. “I don’t know. I have a hangover. Aren’t those supposed to get worse when you get older?”

Tyson can’t remember a time where he’s ever had not-terrible hangovers, so he just shrugs and keeps eating the Nanaimo bars, passing Gabe another one. He eats the entire second bar before saying, “These brownies are fucking terrible.”

Laughter, big and bright and a little painful, bubbles up from the pit of Tyson’s stomach and renders him helpless for a good long while, long enough for Gabe to kind of laugh along even if it’s clear he doesn’t quite get what’s so funny. Tyson’s not even sure either. He’s still laughing when Nate finds them, and Tyson hadn’t even realized Nate had stayed over too but there he is, frowning in at them through the window like an owl.

“What the fuck,” he says when Gabe rolls the window down and holds the container out to him. Nate doesn’t take any, just keeps staring at them. “No, seriously, what are you _doing_?”

“Who the fuck knows,” Gabe says, and he smiles over at Tyson, who smiles back. Nate does not smile but that’s okay because eventually he gets into the car too and they all wind up going to lunch, even if Tyson tries to get away with calling it brunch.

 

In December, Nate hovers for like a week, constantly inviting Tyson over, sticking by him steadfastly on the road, and generally just being up Tyson’s ass, something Tyson complains about to anyone who will listen.

“First he abandoned you and you complained about that,” Gabe says as they get on the team plane together to head to Nashville for a short but important roadie through the Central. “Now you’re mad because he’s paying too much attention to you. Are you ever going to get your shit together, Tyson?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious by now that I’m not,” Tyson huffs, and then Gabe gets shoved down the aisle as Nate comes up behind him, stowing his carry-on and then climbing over Tyson’s legs to get the window seat. “Hello, fancy seeing you here.”

“Shut up,” Nate says, and then he looks at Tyson with big blue eyes and a soft face. Tyson grimaces in response. “Seriously, man, there’s nothing you want to talk about?”

“Not a thing.”

“You know I was there, right,” Nate continues, and Tyson rolls his eyes. Yes, Nate was there when Tyson made a giant mess in LA. No, that doesn’t mean there’s anything they have to talk about.

“What are we talking about?” Gabe asks, popping up over the seat behind them and looking down at them curiously. Tyson gives Nate his most murderous warning look and then looks up at Gabe.

“Absolutely nothing. I’m going to nap.”

“We’re going to _Nashville_ ,” Nate says even though he has to know Tyson might punch him. He’ll at least shove him, maybe. Hard.

Once Tyson closes his eyes and refuses to open them again, even when Nate leans over him and says, “Tyson, come _on_ ,” so close Tyson can smell the tuna wrap he’d had for lunch, and Gabe flicks him in the crown of his head and laughs when Tyson jolts—thankfully, they give up and leave him alone before long.

There really isn’t anything to say. They have to win a game in Nashville, which is always hard enough, and this roadie is short but important. Tyson doesn’t have time to think about Nashville meaning anything other than an important win. It really doesn’t mean anything else and that’s his own damn fault.

They’re not even there that long, flying in the morning of the game, getting in a quick skate, getting the game in, and flying out to St. Louis that same night, so there wouldn’t even be an opportunity—and anyway, Roman Josi doesn’t say a word to him the entire time he’s there.

It’s not a surprise, and it doesn’t even hurt that much; Tyson made this bed and now he’s going to lie in it while screaming into a pillow and that’s his right as a human being and as a closeted gay guy in hockey. Roman doesn’t say a word and so neither does Tyson and everything’s fine. They win, barely, and that’s good. The Avs really need wins.

In the hotel room he shares with Nate in St. Louis, Tyson lies awake and thinks _it’s good that we won, we needed this win, we have to win more_ until his throat is tightening up and he feels like he might get sick. He gets out of his bed and creeps over to Nate’s bed and gets in, and when Nate wakes up a little and makes soft, questioning sounds, Tyson mumbles, “There’s nothing to talk about, okay?” and curls up next to him.

Nate pats his back once, twice, before his hand goes slack and his breathing goes even. Tyson buries his nose in his pillow and tightens the sheets around him and listens to Nate’s breaths, counting them until he falls asleep.

He dreams about small strawberries and the car scene in Titanic, and his eyes hurt when he opens them again the next morning.

But they’re in the thick of the season now and they need these wins, so to win out the rest of the roadie means everything was successful; there’s nothing to feel bad about when Tyson gets home.

He buys a stand mixer at HomeGoods at the mall and tries to make chocolate chip cookies, which can’t be much harder than the cookie cups, but the first batch he takes out of the oven is rock hard so he looks at the rest of the dough, still in the mixing bowl, and then just eats it raw. It tastes good.

“Is there raw egg in this?” EJ asks when he stops by to drop off the extra cookie sheets Tyson had asked for three hours ago. They still have price tags on them and Tyson rolls his eyes, because he could’ve just done that, but he wanted EJ to know he was baking and EJ said he had some. So basically they’re both liars and EJ’s not as good at pretending to be an adult as he thinks he is.

Tyson shrugs, cheeks bulging around an overfilled spoon of cookie dough. There is raw egg in it but Tyson could not give any less of a shit. He’s not good at baking and he doesn’t know why he thinks baking means having your life together but here they are.

EJ sighs and then just grabs another spoon and eats some dough, chewing thoughtfully. “Why didn’t you just bake them, it’s good,” he says, and Tyson gives him his most withering stare.

“Because I didn’t have enough cookie sheets, asshole.” EJ blushes only until he finds all the rock-like cookies still stuck to Tyson’s lone cookie sheet where he’d started trying to pry them off and gave up in disgust. Then he just laughs at Tyson and tells him he’s going to get salmonella.

“Bring it on,” Tyson says but that night after EJ goes home the cookie dough sits in the pit of his stomach like another cookie rock. The price of the stand mixer is pulsing through his skull even though he never thinks of the prices of things, and Tyson gets out his phone and invites himself over to Nate’s house for dinner the next day.

When he lived at EJ’s for a while, EJ used to cook. Not particularly well or anything fancy, as he put it, but he could make pasta and chicken for them on game days and he’d buy balls of pizza dough and roll them out to fit on this heavy stone thing he put in his oven, and he was so fucking smug about making “homemade” pizza like he didn’t just buy all the components premade and put them all together.

Tyson used to eat the pizza, rip EJ for bragging on the pizza, get yelled at for sneaking pieces of pizza to EJ’s dogs, and think that maybe when he was old enough to have a rookie live with him, he’d get a pizza stone. Now he goes to Nate’s house for dinner because his mom cooks normal mom things like casserole and vegetables and a Bundt cake for dessert and he kind of misses living with EJ.

“Having a good season, Tyson,” Nate’s dad says to him over cake and coffee, and Tyson swallows all his food as he thinks on that and realizes it’s true, even though it doesn’t really feel like it at this point.

 

The Avs still need wins so they keep playing hockey, and soon the Predators come into town and that’s one of the hockey games they play. It’s another game where Roman Josi doesn’t say a single thing to him, which is fine, and it’s another win, which is more than fine.

Afterwards, Gabe proposes a bunch of them go out for victory drinks in a firm, authoritative voice; he only takes partying and hockey as seriously as this so they all listen and agree. Well, Tyson says, “Yeah I could definitely get wasted,” and Nate says, “Easy,” even though he knows Tyson’s not going to listen to him by now.

There’s no Swedish fish-flavored vodka or Nanaimo bars this time. Tyson just gets drunk the old-fashioned way, with a bunch of sweaty hockey players surrounding him and putting shots in front of his nose and beers in his hands. It’s fun and it’s what he needs after all the nothingness from Roman.

“This was a good idea, captain,” Tyson tells Gabe, who is basically as drunk as he is even though he always holds it better. Gabe grins wide, bright white basically splitting his face in half, and Tyson blinks and then puts his head down. “Should I get a pizza stone?”

“What?”

“I like beating Nashville.”

“Me too, buddy,” Gabe says, sliding into the booth which is the only thing separating Tyson from the floor. Then it’s also Gabe’s arm stretched across the back of the booth, and when Tyson picks his head up again his hair brushes the inside of Gabe’s forearm.

He’s in a mood where he wants to talk about it, but of course Gabe doesn’t know. He thinks Gabe knows he’s gay but not for Tyson telling him, really, and that’s not even it—he doesn’t even know how to explain. Last summer feels like a fever dream that didn’t actually happen outside of his head, and he doesn’t think anyone who wasn’t there would even believe it did.

“Where’s Nate?” Tyson asks, and Gabe grimaces and dramatically clutches at his chest.

“Ouch. What the hell, Tys? You said we were friends.”

“Yeah but I want to talk to Nate.”

“You can talk to me.”

“No I can’t.”

“Why not?” The corners of Gabe’s lips are twitched up in a pseudo-smile and Tyson knows he likes this, no matter if it’s flirting to him or not; it’s just how Gabe is, charm like breathing to him.

“I just can’t,” Tyson says, and Gabe shuffles in closer, suddenly looking a bit more serious.

“Hey, listen. I know there’s been something up with you lately. And I’m not trying to make you like—I know we joke but we really are friends, and I’m also your captain, and you know I take that seriously—” He’s babbling, a classic drunk Gabe feature, and Tyson finds himself smiling at him. He really does think Gabe is great. Never mind that he’s hot; there are no jokes that can totally hide that.

“—so you can always talk to me, okay Tyson?” The words are clear even if there’s a hint of a slur, and Tyson knows what Gabe means. He believes him.

“Okay Gabe.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” Tyson leans in like Gabe has, his throat tightening up a bit. He opens his mouth without a real plan, which is not exactly a new thing for him or even really a drunk Tyson feature, more of an always Tyson feature.

And case in point, this close Tyson gets a too strong whiff of Gabe’s cologne—why is he wearing cologne after a hockey game, he fucking showered, what is even wrong with him—and chokes on it. Then he pukes all over Gabe’s shirt.

Gabe yells out, “Jesus Christ, what the _hell_ Tyson!” and pushes Tyson away, leaving him to cough and try not to laugh at the ridiculous, hilarious tragedy of his life.

“Sorry,” he sputters but they’ve attracted attention—EJ, laughing his ass off and pulling Gabe out of the booth, Dutchy coming over too and going, “Ew, it’s all over you Gabe,” like that’s really helpful.

As if from a distance, Tyson hears Gabe going, “Thanks, Dutch, that’s really helpful,” and then his voice fades away and Mitchy and Nate are there, asking him if he’s going to get sick again and, “Don’t fucking puke on me, man, I’m serious.”

Tyson doesn’t puke on anyone else that night; he gets home by the grace of God and Jarome Iginla and likes to think he just falls right asleep, but he wakes up to evidence on his phone that this was not the case.

He’s expecting all the notifications from the team group text making fun of him for being a goddamn mess, that’s par for the course. He’s even expecting the text from Gabe forgiving him for puking all over his shirt, and then the better spelled morning text that says _Hey, offer still stands if you ever want to talk_ which is typical Gabe and very nice of him. Those aren’t the texts that make him contemplate throwing up again.

Tyson also has a text from Roman that says _Mix in a water_. He closes his eyes and swallows hard, still lying in bed in last night’s clothes, and then forces himself to open them again to read what he’d sent Roman last night.

It was a lot of poorly spelled apologies, which is fine, and then a perfectly spelled _I miss you so fucking much_ which, why did autocorrect know to bail him out there but not anywhere else? Tyson’s life is a joke.

It could be worse, he reasons as he scrubs his hands over his face and lets out a long groan that sounds a bit like his own death knell. He didn’t tell Roman he loved him. He’d definitely have to leave the country if that happened; he’d move to the south of France and live out his days on a pebbly beach in Nice, remembering the summer where his life peaked and ended.

Tyson’s thinking of doing that anyway as he gets out of bed and starts the process of feeling like a human again, showering and changing and drinking black coffee even though it threatens to tear a hole through his stomach and is crying out for something sweet. He downs it standing at his kitchen counter, looking out his window, and then steels himself and looks back at his phone.

_I’m sorry for being an asshole last night_ Tyson sends to Roman, and then after a few more moments of thinking about it adds _And in general . Sorry ._  
          
To the group text, he sends _Fuck off_ to address everyone who laughed at him, and to Gabe alone he sends _I’m good cap . Sorry for ralphing on your shirt !_ and then has to laugh at his two apologies of the morning, dropping his head into his hand and snorting until he can taste the bitter coffee on the back of his throat again.

By the time he’s done with that episode, only Roman’s responded: _Ok._ Tyson swallows hard and has to blink a lot of times in a row and then fight with himself not to scroll up a bit more and read the texts he’s had to fight not to reread obsessively or delete in a burst of guilt and self-hatred.

He loses the fight, as he always does; he scrolls up and reads the texts Roman sent him when they were in LA, when he was waiting for Tyson to meet up with him like he said he would:

_Hey I’m here! Let me know when you get here._

_Eating all the bread haha._

_We can get more bread :)_

_You stuck somewhere?_

_Hey is everything ok?_

_Ok._

That was the last one, when he must’ve realized. It was the last contact he and Roman had had that summer. Tyson got it when he was in his rental car parked across from the house where he used to live when his dad played here, his hands shaking.

He remembered when his parents told him they had to move to Florida and he cried and said he wouldn’t go; he snuck out when his mom was throwing a going away party with all her LA friends and ran away to his friend Kyle’s house and hid in his pool house for almost two days before Kyle got too spooked and ratted him out.

Tyson was too young to understand that Florida wasn’t quite Germany and he was sure it would be just as hard, and the only thing that made him feel better was that his dad was staying in the NHL, which meant something to him. He got over the move eventually but he never got over living in LA, because they’d been happy there.

Tyson hasn’t deleted the texts from his phone, nor had he done anything else about them until, apparently, last night. There’s so much he wants to say to Roman, the kinds of things that still feel so ridiculous and outrageous and too presumptuous. He feels like he’s just a kid too afraid of his world changing even if it could be for the better, because he can’t imagine that.

So he doesn’t say anything else to Roman, at least not that day. He can’t say the things he wants to over text, if at all, and so they’ll have to sit inside him just like so much else does. It’s nothing he’s not used to.

Gabe texts him _I think you owe me lunch for this. I think that’s in the CBA._ Tyson stares at the text for too long for what it is, then slowly taps out _Ok_ and it’s not anything significant, not close to the last text he’ll ever send Gabe. They text all the fucking time. They play hockey together.

He stops at Starbucks on the way to lunch and gets himself a mocha.

 

**Part Three: Laughing at my jokes again**  
 _2016-2017_       
      
On most days, especially now that they live so close to each other in their new places, Tyson and Nate carpool to and from practice together. On this day, a nippy one in the middle of November, Nate bails out because Charlotte’s in town so Tyson asks Gabe if he wants a ride instead.

“We’ve talked about this,” Gabe says as he gets in the car and puts his seatbelt on. “I’m not going to be your new Nate.”

“No one asked, Landeskog. I’m trying to be a good teammate.” God knows those come at a premium these days, but Tyson shakes his head before he can dwell on how the season is starting to feel like it’s out of control already. It’s not. A few wins and they’re at .500 hockey and they can build from there. They can do this.

“You’re a great teammate. Now, if you’d just use your turn signals—”

“Oh my god, shut up or I’m going to make you walk.”

Gabe doesn’t shut up, not on the rest of the ride over or at practice, or even after practice, when Tyson’s driving again and says, “Okay we’ll grab food in a sec, I just want to stop at—”

“West Elm,” Gabe groans out, leaning to the side and thunking his head against the closed passenger side window. “For god’s _sake_. Don’t you get sick of this?”

“Be quiet, I’ll be really fast. And stop that before you break the glass with your giant head,” Tyson says, routine as breathing. The truth is he _doesn’t_ get sick of buying things for his new house. Every time he’s sure it’s perfect, he feels a little itchy and know there’s more he can do. It’s big, so big for one person, and it has to look like home or what’s the point of it?

Today’s mission is candlesticks for the formal dining room he never uses. Gabe follows him around complaining about his indecisiveness, tossing his head around like an angry horse, and Tyson just ignores him. Well, mostly.

“I know you have an interior designer,” Gabe says, peering over Tyson’s shoulder and snorting at the different kinds of candleholders shaped like lanterns that he’s comparing. “I know you don’t have to be doing this stuff yourself. Come _on._ ”

“Maybe I _like_ doing it, what about that?” Tyson snaps. “And maybe you should mind your business.”

“I’m hungry and you’re my ride, so this is completely my business.” He nudges Tyson’s arm until Tyson turns to look at him completely; then he holds up a tall brass candlestick wrapped in one hand. “What about this one?”

Tyson cocks his head to one side, considering, and while he’s looking Gabe grins and starts stroking his hand up the shaft of the candlestick until Tyson is both blushing and shoving at him. “You’re a child, get out of here.”

“Yeah I’m _trying_ ,” Gabe says, but in the end he relents and gives his opinion on pretty sea glass holders that Tyson thinks match the dark wood in the dining room. He tells Tyson that they’re ugly and that he should buy the brass dick candlesticks instead “for the aesthetic” and he’s smiling about it the whole way back to the car, even though Tyson completely ignores his advice.

He still follows Tyson home after they get food, even though Tyson starts heading for his place first. “No way,” Gabe says, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ve gotta see how ugly these things look in action.”

So Tyson sighs and takes Gabe home with him, even though he’s never really unhappy about bringing one of his friends over to his new house because he loves it so much. He shows off the new mirror he got for the office he never uses, and Gabe says “Nice,” in a nearly genuine-sounding way, and Tyson is pleased.

Then he goes and sets up the candleholders along the pretty blue and silver runner he’d gotten for the table a few weeks back, pleased it looks perfect, feeling happy in a way that feels heady and shaky. “What do you think?” Tyson asks, turning to gauge Gabe’s reaction.

Gabe is looking at him, not the candleholders, and Tyson doesn’t really have to wonder why for long because then Gabe kisses him, soft as seafoam.

There’s a brief moment where Tyson feels surprised, and he thinks everyone feels surprised when they get kissed unexpectedly. But a few moments later the surprise fades and he settles into the kiss like an old coat, warm and still soft and comfortable in a way first kisses shouldn’t be. It’s so easy that it feels obvious; what’s difficult is breaking the kiss, but even that feeling is familiar, déjà vu sliding over his skin as Gabe’s lips slide from his.

“All right,” Tyson sighs, and Gabe looks at him with darkened, serious eyes.

“I hope that was okay,” he says, ever the gentlemanly captain, though he licks his lips hungrily too, and he has his hands tight on Tyson’s arms, insistent and firm. Tyson laughs a little, shaking his head, and doesn’t move away.

“Was it _okay_ —geez. You do the humble Canadian thing better than most Canadians I know, and you’re not even—”

“I mean it,” Gabe says, and he takes a deep breath and looks like he’s preparing for a speech. Tyson tries not to smile even though he wants to. He’s happy even though he has to—“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, and I kept waiting for more than just a signal from you, like a real—”

“We really shouldn’t do that again,” Tyson cuts in, looking right up into Gabe’s eyes because he owes him that much. He’s getting better at this. He has to be better.

Eye contact means he gets a front row seat to the flare of disappointment in Gabe’s eyes, the way his whole face drops, and boy does that suck to see, but Tyson takes a deep breath of his own and continues before he chickens out like he has so many times before. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why?” Gabe asks, so insistent and predictable you could set a watch to him. Tyson opens his mouth again to answer and Gabe barrels on, also predictable. “I mean—I _swear_ you were giving me signals, I just thought maybe you didn’t want to make the first move so I—”

“Hey!” Tyson says, laughing again. “I don’t always make the first move!” He’s trying to remember if he made the first move with Roman, his last comparable situation, one of the reasons this is such a bad idea, and truly can’t; it had felt like a mutual thing, an understanding. There wasn’t any chasing, which is how it ended the way it did.

Of course, this thing with Gabe is more than mutual. Tyson isn’t blind, not physically or emotionally. Gabe’s been regular spank bank material for ages and he’s a good person and maybe one of Tyson’s favorite people. There’s something there and has been for a while; he can deny it all he wants but Gabe’s not an idiot and also not the type of person to deny that kind of thing for long. Tyson knows.

But Gabe’s important. He’s kind of essential actually, not a Nate replacement or even a Nate supplement but his own category of necessary in Tyson’s life. And Tyson didn’t go through several grueling, horrible hours of an arbitration hearing and drag himself out from the depths of not feeling good enough ever to put anything he has with Gabe in jeopardy. He really doesn’t think it’s a good idea.

None of that would even occur to Gabe, who thinks things are as simple as wanting them and then having them and that everything should line up with how he sees the world. Tyson wonders if he’s ever been rejected before, and he thinks from the pure, baffled confusion on Gabe’s face that he probably hasn’t.

“I just don’t understand,” Gabe says, but he’s a really good guy so he adds, “Explain it to me?” in a way that isn’t accusatory or impatient but genuine and searching.

So Tyson tries, he really does. They sit down at the dining room table like grown ass adults and Tyson does his very best to explain without letting the name Roman Josi pass his lips. That’s not necessary. It’s enough to say, “Look, in my experience—doing stuff like this in hockey doesn’t always end well, so I think it’s a really bad idea to try it with a teammate.”

“You’ve never fooled around with a teammate?” Gabe asks, so disbelieving that Tyson’s a little insulted. He’s not sure how he managed to radiate his innate sluttiness all over the locker room but considering he and Gabe have literally never had a conversation like this before, apparently he’d done a good job of it.

“Not in the NHL, come on!” Tyson stops being insulted long enough to let his mind run over Gabe’s incredulity once again. “Oh, my god. You have?”

Gabe stares at the table and his forehead suddenly looks so red that he looks like he got a spontaneous sunburn. Tyson doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or laugh until he cries. “With _who_?”

“Come on, that’s not—this isn’t about that,” Gabe says, looking petulant. Now Tyson does laugh, hard and a little choked.

“It kind of really is! Who was it? Is he still on the team?”

“Stop it, I’m not doing that.”

“Holy shit, he’s still on the team! Was it—was it Nate?” Tyson gets a rush of something that’s at least 50% horror and 50% delight. Maybe 60/40, actually. “Did you corrupt him? No way, he would’ve told me.”

“You know, I’m starting to forget why I ever wanted this,” Gabe snaps, looking really pissed for a minute.

Tyson puts his hands up, placating, and says, “Okay, okay, I promise to drop it. I’m sorry. I won’t make you out someone, come on. I wouldn’t do that.” He clears his throat and puts his hands down, folding them neatly on the table and working hard to keep his voice steady. “Your secret tryst with Nate notwithstanding—”

“Tyson, I swear to god—”

“—this is still a bad idea,” Tyson says. He’s so damn proud of himself, honestly. He’s said this three whole times now with a straight face; he’s standing strong. He means it and he’s saying it loud and proud over his dick and his heart both screaming bloody murder at him. He’s letting his brain do the talking for once in his life. He is very glad that Gabe is wearing a shirt.

“I still don’t get it,” Gabe says, and Tyson takes a big sort of breath, ready to admit a whole bunch of stuff: that he’ll fuck this up, inevitably; that he couldn’t bear to hurt Gabe the way he hurt Roman, without mentioning Roman; that their friendship is too important to risk even a little bit, even if there was a possibility of something good, something amazing—he still can’t imagine that, an outcome where he’s playing hockey and dating the man of his dreams and everything is manageable, okay.

He doesn’t prepare anything, ready to just start letting it fly, the only plan still not to mention Roman, but he doesn’t get the chance. Because Gabe is a really, really good guy, and he continues before Tyson can say anything else and says, “But I won’t push you. I would never do that. I’m disappointed but—I respect how you feel.”

Tyson wants to laugh but doesn’t. How he feels: like the jack-in-the-box is back, winding up with a foreboding, menacing tinkling sound, ready to burst. Tyson always feels full around Gabe, overwhelmed and sometimes leaking in short, sharp bursts of wanting, and those bursts are how they got here, but they can’t go forward. It really wouldn’t be a good idea.

He reaches out and pats his hands over Gabe’s hands companionably. “Thanks, buddy. You’re the best.”

Gabe gives him a small, sad smile. “Sure.” He doesn’t really stick around—he seems embarrassed, which is a hell of a role reversal that Tyson kind of hates, but he leaves on terms where Tyson’s sure he’ll be okay, waving as he gets into an Uber, smiling when Tyson waves back from his open front door.

Tyson watches him go, turns into the living room, grabs the closest, firmest couch cushion he bought two weeks ago at West Elm, and has a good long scream.

   
    

It’s some consolation that Tyson was right: Gabe is completely okay after that, treating Tyson like he has every other day since they’ve been teammates. He’s friendly and charming and teasing and antagonistic in turn, and honestly if Tyson wasn’t still kind of wracked with curiosity over which of their teammates Gabe hooked up with, he could almost forget anything happened.

That’s what he tries to do: forget. Because right now they’re clinging for dear life onto a hockey season that is threatening to spin rapidly out of control. Tyson is playing what feels like the absolute worst hockey of his career which is really fucking annoying because his mouth wrote a bunch of checks over the summer he feels like he’s not cashing yet.

Like, the coach quit. He had to listen to Joe basically read through a Burn Book written specifically about him at the arbitration hearing. It was brutal and it has to start being worth it at some point.

Tyson wonders if he’s supposed to be abjectly miserable to play good hockey and he wouldn’t put it past the universe to try that shit on him. He has a stand mixer _and_ a food processor now even though he kind of uses them both interchangeably every few weeks and yet he falls down on the ice unprompted at least twice a night.

_Did u curse me ?_ he texts Roman after a game in which the Preds pimp-slap the Avs all over their building, because sometimes they text now. It’s fine. They’re not friends but Tyson thinks a place where they can text each other about as often as he uses the stand mixer and food processor and also reference inside jokes on Instagram is a good place to be, considering what a colossal asshole he is.

Now, Roman just kind of treats him like everyone else does, like he’s a total joke, which is fair enough. He texts Tyson back _Yes, it’s an old Swiss spell. You die alone now._

_Dont care about that just want my game back_ Tyson sends back; like dying alone is _news_. He can practically hear Roman snorting from the bar or steakhouse or actual nice house or wherever he is after the game, and that only hurts a little bit. He only misses Roman laughing at him and also kind of with him a little bit.

_That’s not a curse, you just suck_ Roman shoots back.

Tyson fully taps out _yea u remember how I suck !_ and then deletes every single character and just sends _Haha ._ He puts his phone down in his lap where he’s sitting alone in his car at the airport in the middle of the night texting his sort of but not really at all ex and lets out a frustrated sigh.

He can delete that stupid text but he can’t complete an outlet pass to save his life.

The season feels like it’s building up to something, and nothing good. December feels like a slow, miserable ride down a rollercoaster with nothing but a pit of failure to descend into, and Tyson knows everyone feels a bit overwhelmed by it. The real kicker is when EJ breaks his leg and they all know pretty soon after that the bulk of his season is largely over.

There are more unpleasant revelations in December, but Tyson chooses to focus on EJ because there’s only so much he can take at a time. So he heads for EJ’s place as soon as they’re back home and roiling from yet another horrific loss.

It’s getting harder and harder to let them go, to get used to it and move on, and Tyson knows that’s yet another thing they have to work on because there’s almost certainly lots more losing ahead of them.

Tonight, at least, Tyson feels like he can do something, so he goes to see EJ, letting himself into EJ’s place quietly and tiptoeing in in case he’s drugged out or sleeping or something.

EJ isn’t sleeping, though; he’s laid up on his couch with his leg on a cushion on the coffee table, in a bulky hard cast which had apparently been his reward for getting through surgery. His crutches are tossed haphazardly on the couch next to him and he’s glaring at the TV, which is unfortunately playing the Avalanche postgame.

“Turn that off, the Avs suck,” Tyson says, dropping his coat off on a chair and sitting on the couch on the other side of the crutches. EJ gives him a small, tight smile and doesn’t change the channel, and Tyson forgets sometimes how much EJ loves stewing in his misery and feeling his feelings all over the place. It must be some kind of sick Minnesota thing.

“How ya doing, buddy?” Tyson asks, because he deals with feelings in a different way. This earns him a glare, which makes him laugh a little. “All right, relax. Sorry. Seriously, can I get you anything? Are you getting food and stuff?”

He has this wild notion of making them pizza, even though it’s late as hell and he has what feels like an utterly futile practice in the morning. That just feels like a more productive thing to do than fall asleep on EJ’s couch in his game day suit after feeling horrible with him for a while.

“I’m okay,” EJ says. “I’m not completely immobile, you know. This’ll heal.” He snorts, dark and self-deprecating in a way he always manages better than Tyson, like he manages to find more dignity in his shortcomings than Tyson can ever imagine. “Been here before, you know.”

“That’s about enough of that,” Tyson says, reaching over to pat EJ’s shoulder. He cranes his neck to look on the end table on EJ’s side, noting a few pill bottles. “Got anything fun over there at least?”

“Oh yeah, loads of fun,” EJ says, waving at the table. “Help yourself.” Tyson gets up to pick through, because what’s the point of hanging out with your injured buddy if you can’t—“So did you hear about Dutchy?” EJ asks, and Tyson sighs and sits back down because apparently this isn’t fun time.

“Yeah, I heard.”

“You think he waited for my MRI to come back first or did he just see it coming?” EJ sniffs. “Looked it up on WebMD—”

“I don’t think it’s personal, man,” Tyson says. He’s suddenly exhausted. “And like, can you blame him? This fucking sucks. Every bit of this sucks.”

“What, do you want to go with him?” EJ sounds joking and bitter, but he also sounds a little vulnerable in a way Tyson’s never actually heard from him before, like he thinks it’s possible Tyson _does_ want out. Tyson feels abruptly angry, clenching his fingers against his own palms.

“Fuck off. No, I don’t. I went through fucking hell to be on this team, Jesus Christ—but whatever, maybe it’s not about what I want. Maybe they just trade me anyway.” He’ll always think about it, every time the rumors come up and even when they don’t. Patrick Roy is gone but Joe Sakic said those things and Tyson really should’ve listened to his agent when he said it was a bad idea to go to the arbitration hearing in person. It’ll never be out of his head, no matter what happens next.

Certainly, though, the season isn’t helping, and EJ looks a bit sheepish and apologetic like he knows that. “I’m sorry, I know. I didn’t—here, have one of my Percs to make you feel better.” EJ shakes a pill bottle at him and Tyson laughs, shaking his head and leaning back against the couch.

“Just one? Some teammate you are, no thanks. Maybe I _should_ get outta here.”

“Maybe you should learn how to play some defense first,” EJ says sweetly, and he laughs when Tyson shoves at him. “Hey, come on, I’m injured! Leave me alone!”

“You offer me drugs, then you insult me—why do I even bother? Always mixed signals with you.” He’s moved a little closer to EJ as a result of the showing and pushes the crutches out of the way to make it official. This close, he can feel how warm and solid EJ is, and he could hug him but right then just sitting next to him feels like enough. EJ is smiling at him, which is what Tyson had set out to do here.

“Defense or not,” EJ says, and his voice a little as he looks back at the TV. “I really hope you don’t get traded.”

Tyson sighs and sort of slumps next to him, nodding carefully. “Yeah buddy. Me too.”

“I don’t really want anyone to get traded,” EJ continues, just twisting his thumb in the wound like he does. Tyson is rethinking that Perc offer right now. “Well. Except Dutchy.”

“Same here,” Tyson says, blinking up at the ceiling. He might be tired enough that he doesn’t need any Percs, actually. He’s warm enough that he could probably just fall asleep right here, which is rude but whatever. It’s just EJ.

They’re quiet for a bit, and then EJ says, “I really want Dutchy to get traded,” and then Tyson is laughing too hard to fall asleep.

 

After losing EJ, and after hearing about Dutchy, the talk of trades lingers in the air like a stench. Of course, the Avs just keep on losing so that doesn’t exactly make it better, but it’s almost all anybody talks about when they talk about their team. It’s impossible to avoid or ignore even though Bednar says they have to block out the noise and just try to win some hockey games. It’s not that easy.

Tyson could probably ignore the rumors a little better if they were just about him; after all, he is used to it, even if that doesn’t make them easier to manage. But Gabe gets pulled into trade rumors and that just—that claws at Tyson’s chest, making him choke up with fear.

There is something wild and horrified in him that quakes at the thought of Gabe getting traded, especially since he rejected him. It’s not something he ever imagined could happen and now that it’s not only a possibility but feels like a likelihood, Tyson fucking hates it. He _hates_ it. It’s on par with all the losing, and looms like a greater, longer-lasting loss.

He hates thinking like this about a teammate but the more people bring up Gabe’s name in rumors, the more he’s on EJ’s side: Tyson really hopes that Dutchy gets traded. It seems like that could quiet things down, could feed whatever need Joe has to do a teardown job and start over from this mess without doing the permanent damage that losing Gabe would do.

For his part, Gabe never really talks about it except to the media: he wants to stay, he wants to be a part of the solution; they’re losing and he takes responsibility and he wants to see them out of this.

Tyson’s not going to pick the worst part of this hell season yet—it’s still only December, after all—and there are lots of fucking contenders, but seeing Gabe stand up in front of the media after every horrific loss and take the blame every time might be right up there. Hearing him basically beg to stay on this joke of a team makes Tyson ache, makes him forget about how his own ass is out there on the block too, because that doesn’t seem important. Gabe is important, and watching what this is doing to Gabe is almost more than he can bear.

There’s a particularly bad stretch of days in December, a bit before the sorely-needed Christmas break where everything kind of hits a fever pitch. It really feels like Gabe’s on his way out, they can’t win a fucking game to save their lives, Nate is starting to shake under the weight of being one of the “safe” ones, and it’s all just—Tyson goes for a drive to get out of the house he thought could fix a whole bunch of stuff inside of him that probably can’t be fixed.

It’s a quiet, cold winter night; they’d had flurries in the morning and Tyson’s sure they’ll be buried soon enough, followed by a string of 15 degree days because that’s Denver for you. Tyson drives without really thinking about where he’s going, considering going for a drink by himself, maybe seeing a movie or some random live music.

He winds up at Gabe’s house instead, which wasn’t even a fucking option, but here he is. He can see lights on in the front and that’s not a good thing, because it means he drives up and gets out of his car and rings Gabe’s bell, his heart thumping too hard in his chest. Winding up.

Gabe answers the door in pajama pants and a white t-shirt, not sleepy but looking ready for it. He looks surprised, which is fair—they hang out sometimes but no one’s really hanging out that much right now, and they don’t hang out enough that showing up unannounced like this is really typical unless something’s wrong.

That must be what Gabe is thinking, because he steps back quickly to let Tyson in and says, “Hey, man, is everything okay?”

His eyes are so clear and kind, boring into Tyson’s, his mouth set in a soft, concerned frown. For once, Tyson doesn’t look at him and catch only on the swell of his upper arms and his shirt stretched tight across his chest, his bright hair clouding everything—Tyson looks into his eyes and dunks himself right into the desperate, aching feeling he gets whenever he considers the thought of Gabe not being here, the idea that he’d have to make fun of the size of his head in a different uniform.

It’s the same feeling he gets when he thinks about kissing Gabe, which is probably the most fucked up thing of all. Tyson still goes for it, though.

Gabe leans right into the kiss as soon as Tyson moves, bringing his arms up and around Tyson and spreading his hands across his back as if to hold him there, as if he might run. It’s not that crazy—Tyson hadn’t gotten this far in LA before he’d run, and he’s not going to compare what he felt for Roman to what he feels for Gabe but they’re in the same fucking league—but Tyson’s not going to run.

He’s here, in Gabe’s house, in his arms, kissing him hard and desperate. It’s enough that when they break the kiss Tyson’s mouth kind of hurts, and they’re both breathing harshly and a little shaky. Gabe stares at him, so much flashing over his face, and Tyson can’t help looking. He didn’t look enough, last time, at least not at the important stuff.

Even though his voice breaks, Tyson still manages, “I hope that was okay,” just to see Gabe smile. Gabe’s fingers dig into his back and his smile tightens up but his eyes are still bright—happy, and Tyson can’t help feeling pleased about that.

“Of course it was okay,” Gabe says, but then because he’s Gabe—still that great, great guy—he adds, “I hope—is this okay with you?”

Tyson’s first instinct is to snap or deflect; of _course_ it was okay, he made the first move, he’s initiating, and has Gabe seen himself? He pushes that instinct down, though, because this situation feels too dire, too fragile and important, and Gabe needs to know some things.

“I still think this is a bad idea,” Tyson says, and he doesn’t let Gabe manage too much of a frown. “But I just—I just don’t care. Everything fucking sucks and I don’t care anymore.”

“Yeah,” Gabe says, and his smile is back but it’s grimmer, more determined. “It’s okay. I just have to prove it.”

“Prove what?” Tyson asks, his heart swooping a little like it knows what’s coming before he does.

“That this is a good idea,” Gabe says, and yep; Tyson’s knees feel a little weak. “The best idea, I think.”

“Come _here_ ,” Tyson says, like they’re not inches apart, and he yanks Gabe’s mouth back to his and kisses him breathless again.

They wind up on Gabe’s sectional, Tyson’s winter things dropped in a trail from the foyer until they’re in the same amount of layers, and then less than those layers. Gabe’s not wearing anything under his pajama pants and Tyson has never been more thrilled to discover this fact, gripping Gabe where he’s warm and hard in his hand, hovering over him on his knees and one hand while Gabe looks up him with big, hungry eyes.

“D’you have lube somewhere?” Tyson asks as he just holds Gabe, not moving, relishing how hard he is just from kissing and Tyson on top of him. It’s not like he isn’t right there too, but this is satisfying in a way that feels like dreams coming true. Gabe is really, really into him and this is the part, at least, that Tyson is good at. This is the part he surely won’t fuck up.

Gabe blinks and hesitates just long enough that Tyson is really wishing they were at his house, because there’d be lube in his hand 5 minutes ago. But then Gabe brightens and says, “Oh yeah, check the table,” and Tyson leans over to fish around on the little shelf under the coffee table, where he finds a small tube of KY next to a Klask board.

Tyson picks up the lube and then looks at Gabe, who bursts out laughing. “So when Dutchy proposed a board game night and you bailed, this was why?” Tyson asks, laughter shaking out of him before he can stop it.

“You got me,” Gabe says, red in the face from laughter.

“Unbelievable. So should I break out a Scrabble board to get you going or are you good to go?”

Gabe rolls his hips up a little, making Tyson’s fist slide down his shaft a little forcefully, and he watches in fascination as Gabe’s eyes flutter shut. “Yeah I’m good,” he says, and Tyson shivers a bit and pops the KY open.

Everything gets slick and easy after that; Gabe keeps fucking up into Tyson’s fist and groaning sometimes and Tyson bites his lip and strokes him hard, a little rough, just to feel the shudder in Gabe’s hips.

He leans down until Gabe’s dick is a slick line against his stomach and bites Gabe’s bottom lip and feels his eyes fly open; between them, everything gets abruptly messier as Gabe comes. Tyson coaxes his dick through it, holding on until Gabe is shivering and squirming under him.

Then he sits up in his filthy t-shirt with his pants and his underwear pulled down, perched on Gabe’s thighs and grabbing his own dick which started yelling at him about 10 Gabe groans ago. Tyson groans, too, and his eyes kind of drift shut as he works to bring himself off, hand slick not just with lube anymore, and when he opens his eyes again Gabe is staring at him with his mouth open, starry-eyed and still somehow hungry.

Tyson comes hard and so he’s not the only one in a filthy t-shirt.  

It doesn’t matter because pretty soon they’ve stripped off all their clothes and moved around the couch. Tyson sits with his bare legs stretched over Gabe’s equally bare lap and kisses and touches him under a throw blanket, warming each other up, leaving streaky red marks across each other’s skin where they keep grabbing.

Tyson’s face stings with beard burn and soon it’s on his thighs, too, because Gabe leans down to kiss those too. Then up his belly, all over his chest, where he tongues over Tyson’s nipples and makes him kick out and grab Gabe’s hair, pulling hard.

Gabe chuckles against him, kisses his mouth again, and the lube appears again out of nowhere like they actually are at Tyson’s house. The next time they each come, Gabe has two fingers in Tyson’s ass and Tyson has the throw blanket twisted up around him, Gabe’s hair twisted up in his fingers.

The throw blanket goes right in the laundry with all of their clothes, and Gabe says, “Here, you can borrow something from me,” and gets him a pair of pajama pants and an identical white tee, handing them over hopefully.

The distant, fading ghost of self-preservation’s voice echoes in Tyson’s head: _this is a bad idea_. This, all of this, and specifically staying over: terrible idea. But it also seems like the only thing to do, the only real option with Gabe, even though it seems impossible at the same time.

So they go to bed together just to sleep, curled up under Gabe’s ridiculously puffy white duvet. At some point in the night their feet tangle up but that’s it; Tyson sleeps so soundly he wakes up marveling that he’s been sleeping like crap for about a month and didn’t realize it until he slept like this.

Gabe shudders awake not long after him, smiling across the pillow at him. There’s a slim space where Gabe’s blackout curtains aren’t drawn together and it’s spilling a bar of bright winter sunlight across the floor, across the pure white of the duvet. The bed is as warm as if it’s bathed entirely in that light and Gabe’s hair, mussed up and spiked against the pillow, looks brighter than the sun.

Tyson watches Gabe’s face for a few moments, watching him wake up. He searches around in his stomach for the familiar, dull feelings of dread, the reminders that they’re going to hurt each other doing this, but there’s nothing there. All he can feel is warm and full, warmer still when Gabe says, “Come here,” in a low, husky voice and pulls him across the sheets to lie mostly on top of him.

There, under the duvet, kissing Gabe’s mouth and ignoring him mumbling about morning breath, Tyson lets himself relax and get lost in the gentleness of the morning, the soft and sweet feel of Gabe’s mouth on his, his tongue slipping across Tyson’s teeth. He pulls the duvet over their heads and swallows up Gabe’s chuckles, leans back a little in the dim orange darkness, and swallows hard.

“Don’t get traded,” Tyson says, feeling ridiculous. Gabe pulls him back down quickly, kissing all over his face, kissing his ear and his cheek and his nose until Tyson pushes him back to his mouth again with his hands cupped on Gabe’s cheeks

“I won’t,” Gabe whispers, also ridiculous, like he can fucking stop it. He even adds, “I promise,” and kisses Tyson hard before he can laugh darkly, to spit reality out into the warm, still air between them, and break the morning peace.

 

The hockey disaster steadily unfolding around them doesn’t change as Gabe and Tyson start hooking up. When Tyson is feeling particularly stupid, he likes to imagine that having sex with Gabe could appease whatever hockey god they pissed off somehow, that some unbalanced part of the universe can sort itself into shape now that Tyson’s becoming well-acquainted with Gabe’s dick.

Usually he imagines this right after he’s come, when Gabe is a heavy, sweaty weight on top of him, catching his breath. Bednar makes some gently passive-aggressive comments about their fitness and stamina all the time and while Tyson knows it’s directed at other guys more than them, he still kind of wants to be smug about the regular workouts they’re giving each other. Getting swole for the dick. He’s going to tell people Gabe’s his training partner.

Actually, Tyson isn’t going to tell a living soul about Gabe, and he and Gabe agree on that fairly easily. “Not even Nate,” Tyson says, and that’s the only part where Gabe hesitates, ducking his head over the plate of scrambled eggs he’d proudly cooked for both of them.

Tyson likes his eggs poached or fried or basically anything but scrambled but he shovels them into his mouth to avoid elaborating too much. Gabe says, “I get it, I guess. It’s really nobody’s business but ours,” and Tyson swallows his food and nods carefully.

“Right. And also the last thing this room needs is hearing two guys are boning while everyone else suffers,” and Gabe scrunches his face up a bit, grinning.

“Oh come on. Everybody in that room is getting laid, what, do you think losing comes with a vow of celibacy?”

“Maybe it should,” Tyson says, just to be a contrary dick, and Gabe tosses his head back and laughs.

“Oh yeah? So what, I can’t fuck you until we win our next game?”

“Yeah, sure, let’s see if that works,” Tyson says, already regretting it but kind of curious. He thinks they’ll take anything at this point, even fake sex magic.  

They lose three games on a three game road trip, and it’s not like they’d have been boning anyway, but Gabe follows him home from the airport and pushes his way into Tyson’s front hall and starts taking his clothes off.

“We haven’t won yet,” Tyson says, voice cracking up a bit, drained and hurting from all the losing, a feeling he can only ever really shake in Gabe’s bed. He still winds up on his knees in front of Gabe, sucking him off carefully and slowly, savoring it even as his knees protest and ache and his muscles feel like jelly.

Afterwards, Gabe lays Tyson out in his own bed and eases himself down on his dick, going slow and just as careful as Tyson had. He says, “If I can make you come three times tonight, it’s a win,” and clenches around Tyson with purpose. Tyson groans and tries to shut his eyes but Gabe goes, “No way, open up,” and adds, “Look at me,” in this deep, broken up voice and Tyson is done for.

He gets Tyson back in the game with three fingers in him, stretching him out carefully while nerve endings fire off like rockets all over his body every time Gabe hits his prostate.

Tyson had never really gotten off on getting fingered before Gabe and he’s kind of grumpy about it, protesting a bit when he realizes he’s that close and Gabe didn’t even get his dick in him, saying, “Come on, fuck me before I—” and then cutting off into a low, moaning sort of breath when Gabe milks another orgasm out of him, fuzzy and smug and triumphant above him.

“One more,” Gabe whispers as he pushes into Tyson much too soon, so that Tyson is squirming with it, oversensitive and somehow needy as he grabs at Gabe like that’s going to get him away from him. He fucks Tyson so gently and slowly that it’s like getting a weird kind of massage, and though it takes a good long while, Tyson starts hardening again with Gabe’s firm hand on his dick.

He wants to laugh and tell Bednar to never ever question Gabe’s stamina again. Then he can’t quite remember who Bednar is because Gabe starts fucking him in earnest and it’s something like the best thing he’s ever felt.

His eyes feel wet when he comes _again_ , Gabe giving this happy sort of cry and following pretty fast. Gabe thrusts through it and pulls out achingly slow while Tyson shivers and blinks a lot, and then Gabe leans down to bracket Tyson’s head with his arms and breathe a little harshly across his face.

“I win,” he whispers, and Tyson groans and puts his hands over his eyes but lets Gabe pluck them away easily enough.

“You win,” Tyson says, staring up at Gabe, smiling at him before he can help it, going warm and content when Gabe smiles back like he can’t help it either.

Then he pushes Gabe onto his back and sits on top of him. “ _And_ you’re behind, come on.”

Gabe laughs, and then stops laughing before long, and Tyson thinks that if this is the only kind of victory they’re going to get for a while, well. It’s a pretty damn good one.

Keeping the secret, even from Nate, makes what he and Gabe have something small and contained and protected. As winter deepens around them it’s so easy to just feel like the world is shut out, all the noise and the losing and the trade rumors; they’re not gone, they’re not going away maybe ever, but they’re quiet here.

Tyson feels like he’s on one side of the glass and this awful season is on the other, beating against it and rattling everything all around the rink. But Tyson and Gabe just keep skating with their heads down and their hands tangled and everything’s fine.    

So often it’s just the two of them, enough that at one point Nate straight up asks him if he’s seeing someone new. “Yeah,” Tyson says, trying to smooth his face into as much impassivity as he can manage. Nate, driving them to practice, looks at him with a brow that seems constantly furrowed these days, so Tyson quickly adds, “Yeah, uh, just some guy I met somewhere.”

“Some guy you met somewhere,” Nate repeats, and Tyson shrugs.

“What, do you want details?” It’s a little snotty and Nate looks hurt enough for a minute that Tyson feels immediately bad. “Look, there’s really not much more to it. It’s just a way to pass the time, you know?” Nate still looks skeptical, shooting glance between the semi-icy road ahead and Tyson huddled up in his passenger seat. “I can’t just sit around and be miserable all the time,” Tyson adds, and that seems to make Nate slump, nodding slowly.

“Yeah, I get it. Just—be careful.”

“Why do you think I’m incapable of sleeping with someone and being careful at the same time?”

“Because I was your best friend for literally all of 2015,” Nate snaps which, okay. Fair enough. And Tyson has to fight down a chuckle because if only Nate fucking knew what kind of trouble he’s getting himself into now.

He’s kind of just ignoring that there’s going to be an inevitable disaster for now. It’s too good in the meantime to think about that: just Tyson and Gabe, having a bunch of sex, acting completely normal otherwise. They head to their normal hockey rink almost every day, lose their normal hockey games, go to their normal practices and go on their normal road trips. And in between that, they fuck around a lot. It’s a lot of fun.

In a way it’s more straightforward even than what Tyson had with Roman, which was shrouded in the fact that Roman never saw a reason to really talk about it as it was happening and Tyson was scared shitless to. Gabe’s a talker, and when he doesn’t talk about stuff he just kind of does it, and Tyson appreciates that.

The stuff he just does is more than sex, which Tyson supposes is inevitable when you’re teammates with the guy you’re sleeping with. As the season tumbles on, feeling like a death march to the trade deadline, the guys still don’t hang out as often as they would in normal circumstances, but Tyson still likes going out.

And he really likes going out with Gabe, even when they don’t do anything. It doesn’t really feel like dating except for the knowledge that they’re going to head back to either Gabe’s place or Tyson’s place and have sex. And that kind of makes it better than a date: there’s no guessing about where they stand or what kind of signals they’re sending each other. They’re attracted to each other. They’re super into each other. Tyson can handle that.

They get steaks together a few times a week; they take snowy walks by the river with Zoey, and they throw snowballs for her to catch in her mouth in Gabe’s yard. At Tyson’s house, they sit in front of his fake fireplace and drink Bailey’s hot chocolate that Tyson makes “from scratch”, ruining the bottom of one of his Le Creuset saucepans by fucking up a double boiler to melt the good chocolate, but the drinks turn out okay so he’ll call that a win even when he sets the smoke alarm off.

It’s not really the doing stuff that throws Tyson for a loop; and obviously the sex makes sense. It’s when they have these quiet sort of moments in their houses together, under a blanket on the couch, watching TV and not naked and not even really thinking about getting naked. Gabe cooks one of these nights, and he’s really not as good of a cook as he thinks he is, but Tyson clears his plate and goes, “Okay, that was good enough to put out for,” and Gabe grins but says, “Later.”

Between now and later, apparently, Gabe wants them to sit with glasses of wine on the couch and relax. Tyson gets fidgety after he finishes his glass too fast and wakes Zoey up from the floor to play with her tug-o-war rope, but soon she gives him an unimpressed look and flops away by Gabe’s side of the couch.

Tyson sticks his tongue out at her and Gabe laughs, shaking his head. “You’re a child.”

“I’m bored! Your dog won’t play with me.”

“I guess she doesn’t like you,” Gabe says, leaning back against the couch cushions and taking an austere sip of red. He has his legs folded under him, sweatpants and slippers and his knees up so Tyson can’t even peep some sweatpants dick. He looks very content to be mocking Tyson, in his natural habitat. “She’s a very good judge of character.”

“My dick’s a good judge of character,” Tyson says, sniffing. He watches Gabe’s eyes scrunch shut as he tries not to laugh out loud, shaking a little with the effort. “Is it gonna get any new material to consider tonight?”

“Maybe,” Gabe tells him. He still looks perfectly calm and relaxed, happy with just _being_ with Tyson, and Tyson has to fight not to squirm around that.

The other thing about being with Gabe is that his straightforwardness, his simple wanting, makes Tyson bolder. He asks things like “What are you _doing_?” without being afraid of the consequences, because he knows Gabe well enough to kind of know the answers and how he’ll react.

“Just enjoying your company, Tys,” Gabe says with a sort of sigh. He puts his glass down and reaches out, and Tyson gets excited, but Gabe just widens his legs apart and pulls Tyson to sit between them, coaxing him back against him.

“Seriously?” Tyson says, and he feels Gabe’s laughter rumble through his back. “Oh, my god.”

“Be quiet.”

“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

“I’m really not.” Gabe is, in fact, stroking his fingers up and down Tyson’s arm but not in a sex way; it’s in a way that’s meant to relax him, and Tyson’s chest feels warm and it’s a fight to keep protesting. But dammit, this is a dangerous, slippery slope and he doesn’t feel bad about saying so.

“Remember when I said this was a bad idea?”

Gabe sounds a little drowsy, still very calm, but also very alert when he says, “Yeah?” soft against Tyson’s ear. Tyson shudders.

“This stuff is kind of what I meant.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m really bad at it,” Tyson says. He means it to come out whiny, with laughter in his voice—because Tyson is a joke and that’s what all this is when it gets too serious, until it’s not anymore—but there’s a shakiness there he didn’t mean to get out. And Gabe’s arms tighten around him.

He feels Gabe’s lips at his ear again, brushing the softest hint of a kiss there before whispering, “I disagree.” Tyson shudders again, and without really meaning to, he leans back a bit more, letting some of the tension running through him ease out in Gabe’s hold.

“I really am,” Tyson says, but he dozes off in Gabe’s arms, on the couch, doing nothing. They don’t have sex that night and while any moments not spent feeling Gabe’s hard, naked body all over him feel wasted, he can’t really lie to himself and say he doesn’t like this.

Tyson might be bad at it, and Gabe can disagree all he likes but it’s the truth—he might be bad at it but he really loves it. He thinks that’s the core tragedy of his life, the reason he keeps winding up here.

It also drives home the inevitability of disaster, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but they’ve got time for that. After all, they’ve got a disaster hockey season to contend with in the meantime.

 

Last season, with the trade deadline in view and the possibility of playoffs still within reach, time seemed to fly by and there wasn’t enough of it. The Avalanche ran out of games to scrounge up wins; Dutchy and Nate got injured and they couldn’t stop the games from grouping up in piles of losses to wait for them to get back. The end of the season slipped through their fingers like water and they missed the playoffs at a distance that stung, because they still came pretty damn close.

This season, though, time stretches through the schedule at an agonizingly slow pace, because clearly they’re going nowhere. Sometimes Tyson wakes up, goes to practice or a morning skate, plays a hockey game, and leaves the rink positive it’s never going to end. He feels like he’ll be stuck in this hell forever, that maybe they all will.

Time crawls by through January and into February. Dutchy stays on the Avalanche and that works to slow everything down too; he seems to be going through slow, muted motions, giving clipped, tight answers to questions he doesn’t want to face anymore. The whole team might be moving through quicksand on the ice and off it, and god do they all miss EJ’s fire, and then Z’s spark when he goes down too.

Tyson feels like he’s shrinking three feet every time he steps out onto the ice after that; every shift is something of a struggle. Gabe is encouraging, both in the captain way and the way where he lets Tyson bend him over an armchair and fuck him hard until they’re both breathless, and then they realize they forgot a towel for the chair.

“You got this,” Gabe tells him in either scenario. Tyson fucks him harder, grunting, not caring about the towel or the chair or the ice. He realizes with a sad sort of humor that these are the moments where he feels his most competent.

“You think they can redo the Norris to include fucking in their criteria?” Tyson asks later, when towels have been acquired and they’ve cleaned up but they’re still lounging around the living room naked.

Gabe stretches out, wincing a bit with a big, soft smile on his face, and Tyson feels like 10 million bucks.

“I mean, it _is_ basically a scoring award,” Gabe says, and Tyson laughs. He’s a little cold, enough that he might steal one of Gabe’s bathrobes and wear it around the rest of the day, but he doesn’t want to encourage Gabe getting dressed so he holds off for now. He can handle the cold for a bit, for naked Gabe.

“I’ll petition them to fix the Selke up for you too,” Tyson says, fitting his hands crossed behind his head and lying back on the couch. The only parts of them that are touching are their legs, tangled between the other’s, and maybe that’s why he’s cold. Maybe he should move. “You’re so good at two-way fucking.”

“Stop it,” Gabe says. He hooks his feet around Tyson’s ankle and shakes him a little. “You’re ridiculous and the puns are falling apart.”

“Excuse me, my puns are incredible,” Tyson says. He kicks blindly at Gabe’s thigh.

The season is going slow, slow but it means his time with Gabe feels lasting, stretched out between them like a long winter sunrise. He might be bad at this but he’s getting used to these moments where they’re just together and hockey isn’t beating down their doors and everything doesn’t seem so terrible.

It will end, everything ends. If Tyson fucked things up with Roman, then he’ll fuck things up with Gabe. It’s just logic. But for now Tyson tries to just sink into these moments and wrap them around him like a blanket.

Tyson’s still cold so he slithers down the couch and pulls Gabe to him because he’s a better bathrobe than the one he keeps hanging on the back of his bathroom door. Tyson breathes in Gabe’s warm, woodsy scent, the lingering sweat on his shoulder blades and the heat of his neck where his pulse is flying under the skin. He holds Gabe tight.

He thinks they do a good job around the guys, because nobody seems to suspect a thing about them. Not even Nate, who only occasionally asks how his thing with some guy that he met somewhere is going. Tyson just says, “It’s still going,” which is the more acceptable thing to say than, “I feel like I’m going to fly apart every time I see him and then he puts me back together with his big hands,” which is closer to the truth.

Nate accepts that, but what he doesn’t accept is Tyson spending all his free time with some guy that he met somewhere. So one day after another one of Schrodinger’s practices, Nate says, “Come on, we’re gonna pick up EJ and go to the mall. He’s off his crutches now, you know.”

Tyson’s fine with that, even though he’d much rather be getting burritos with Gabe and then eating guacamole off his abs. It’s fine, they have burritos at the mall. But then Gabe is joining them, which is less than ideal because it means a little extra concentration in keeping his hands to himself, not laughing too hard at Gabe’s jokes and not making too many big head jokes in turn.

It’s easier to do this when they’re in the locker room, when hockey and sadness consumes everything. It’s been so, so long since he’s hung out with Nate and Gabe on their own, which is its own separate kind of sadness, and never mind EJ. A nervous glance back at Gabe in the backseat of Nate’s car proves he’s not the only one worried, but Gabe gives him a firm sort of grin, too. They got this. They can do it.

EJ is off the crutches, growing a misery beard and wearing his teeth all the time, but he’s not supposed to traverse great planes or anything, so they hover around the same smaller area and resolve to grab drinks and food at Elway’s fast enough.

Tyson catches EJ looking at him a few times as Nate and Gabe bitch at each other about socks or whatever, but Tyson is stupid so he doesn’t really think about it much until they’re in a booth and they’ve put their drinks and food orders in at the restaurant.

“So,” EJ says, breaking apart a piece of bread. “How long have you two been messing around?” He shoves half the piece of bread in his mouth and grins. He looks basically demonic, and Tyson wishes he’d broken his jaw instead of his leg so he would _shut up_.

He kind of feels like he got slapped, and looking at Gabe tells the same story, but Nate, sitting across from them—they hadn’t fucking done the same side of the table thing on purpose, okay, it just happened that way—snaps his head to the side to stare at EJ. “ _What_?”

“Oh, Nate,” EJ says, shaking his head. “This is why you need me around. Look at them.”

“Don’t look at us,” Tyson says in a high voice. He opens up the wine book and tries to hold it front of them, but Gabe’s stupid head is too big so it covers nothing. He glares over the top of it at EJ. “Hey! Fucktruck! Will you shut up?”

“ _What_?” Nate says again, and now he’s gone from looking at EJ like he’d grown a second set of teeth out of his forehead to looking at Tyson and Gabe. Gabe, who is starting to grin a little, and Tyson, who is contemplating smacking Gabe’s grinning face with the wine book. “You two are— _what_?”

“Will you stop saying _what_?” Tyson whisper-yells, and Gabe puts his face in his hands and starts laughing.

“Are you serious right now?” Nate asks. He somehow looks even paler than usual, which should not be physically possible, and his eyes are darting between the two of them so fast they’re starting to get watery. “You two are—oh, my god.”

“Seriously, how long’s it been?” EJ asks, and now it’s Tyson’s turn to put his face in his hands as Gabe fucking _answers_.

“Right after you went down, actually,” Gabe says, shrugging a little. “A few months, I guess.”

Nate slams his hands down on the table, making Tyson jump. “ _This_ is some guy you met somewhere,” he hisses at him, and Tyson feels his face turning red as hell.

“…wow,” Gabe says, chuckling next to him. “Really, Tys?”

“What was I supposed to say? We had an agreement,” Tyson says. He jabs his fingers at EJ. “An agreement which you just _broke_.”

“I had no idea any agreement was in place, I was just curious,” EJ says. He looks like this is the most entertainment he’s had in months, which is probably fair, since he also looks like someone who got lost in the woods hunting caribou that forgot how to speak to humans or pee indoors.

Tyson tries to convey that insult through the power of glaring, and EJ just flashes him a full-toothed grin that is frankly the creepiest part. “So a few months, wow. Going well, I gather?”

“Why don’t you go fucking fuck yourself,” Tyson says at the same exact time Nate says, “Tyson fucked Roman Josi.”

A heavy, dull silence descends over their booth. EJ pushes his hand over his mouth and starts shaking with suppressed laughter, but beside him Gabe is very, very still, his grin frozen on his face.

“What,” Tyson starts out slowly, over-pronouncing every letter. “The _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

Nate looks pissed, eyes glittering and narrowed. He grabs the half of EJ’s bread that he’d been too busy laughing to shove into his mouth and takes a savage bite out of it, and Tyson has a brief but excellent fantasy in which he reaches across the table and strangles Nate while his mouth is full.

“Just thought he should know,” Nate says with that full mouth, and Tyson cracks out a horrible laugh like maybe he’s the one being strangled.

“Are you fucking _12_? What the fuck is your problem?”

“Okay,” Gabe says, putting his hands out over the table, ever the stately captain. He’s not quite looking at Tyson, though. “Let’s take a breath. Nate, why did you think I should know that?”

“It literally has nothing to do with anything,” Tyson says, and Nate just shrugs. He’s gone a little pink in the face now, chewing carefully like he needs something to do, and Tyson really hopes he’s starting to regret what he just did. Tyson’s starting to regret ever saying Nate was his best friend.

“Just—seems relevant to the conversation, that’s all,” Nate says.

“You’re a _brat_ ,” Tyson spits out and Gabe puts his hand on his arm.

“Easy. I’m not like—mad, come on,” Gabe says, finally looking at him. He bites his bottom lip. “You’re not still—”

“ _No_ ,” Nate and Tyson both say in completely different tones of voice. Nate slumps a little in his seat, looking down at his plate, and Tyson just barely refrains from kicking him.

“Okay, then I don’t really get why it’s relevant, Nate,” Gabe says slowly. He looks over at EJ like he’s looking for another adult in this conversation, like EJ didn’t start the whole stupid thing by being a huge cock.

“It’s just—come on,” Nate says, shaking his head but still not quite looking up. “This is such a bad idea. You were fucked up about Josi literally—”

“Nate I swear to god if you keep talking I’m never speaking to you again,” Tyson says all in a rush, meaning every single word of it. Nate does shut up, mouth twisting as he finally looks up at Tyson, then looks between him and Gabe and kind of shrinks.

“Look, can we talk about this later? I’m sorry, okay—”

“Yeah, Judas was sorry when he betrayed Jesus,” Tyson mutters darkly, and EJ finally erupts into full-on laughter.

“Oh my _god_ , you’re not messing around with Dutchy too, are you?”

That’s pretty much all it takes for the rest of them to finally start laughing, too. Tyson feels like a rubber band has snapped across the table, taking three quarters of the tension with it and all that’s left is the utter ridiculousness and absurdity of such a concept. They all laugh way too hard in a release that feels good, and to Tyson it seems like he’s been wrung out when it finally dies down, his anger and hurt slipping out after the laughter.

“I’ve missed you guys,” EJ says, and he’s grinning wickedly but Tyson knows he means it, too. “Who the hell else has conversations like this?”

“What, you don’t unspool the sexual histories of all your horse friends?” Tyson asks, shaking his head. “How boring.”

“You know, back up there a minute—how in the _hell_ did you manage to bag two guys that look like _that_ while I’ve just been sitting around on my couch with tumbleweeds flying around down there?” EJ demands, jabbing his finger at Tyson accusingly.

Tyson puffs up, smug, and bares his teeth. “It’s because all of these are real, loser. Sucks to suck.”

“Tyson, I hate to break it to you, but I’m not sleeping with you for your teeth,” Gabe says, setting them all off again while Gabe grins widely at him. Tyson grins back.

Their drinks come, and then their food, and Tyson has to take a deep breath as the dust settles and everything just seems normal again. They eat and mess around with each other like they’ve done a billion times and even though Nate keeps shooting Tyson worried, guilty glances, everything else feels the same.

It’s the same realization that rocked him in France: he and Gabe are sleeping together and a few guys know and yet life goes on around them. Even when he doestalk to Nate, later after Gabe and EJ have gotten dropped off and by unspoken agreement Tyson stays in Nate’s car, nothing is totally blown up. It’s just Nate, eyes on the road but darting over at Tyson, clearly working up to it.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually, and Tyson sighs.

“I’m sorry too. I should’ve told you.”

“Right, but I’m _really_ sorry about what I said about Josi. I just—”

“I know, Nate. I get it.” And this is the danger he’d been heading off when he said he and Gabe had to be a secret: putting Nate in this position, and EJ and everyone really, the whole team. They’ll be a distraction, a problem, because even though life moves on around them this will end eventually and so it’s still a bad idea.

Roman had been an outsider; the only other consequence of what happened with him was Cody being a little frosty to him for like a week, and maybe the Preds finish their checks a little harder against him, but that’s it.

But if—when—things go south with Gabe, everyone’s connected. It will ripple out and affect everyone, including and especially Nate. That’s what Tyson’s afraid of, what he’s still bracing for.

To drive his point home, Nate says, “You can’t dump Gabe like you dumped Josi,” and Tyson puts his head in his hands.

“Yeah I _know_ , geez. I know that.”

“I mean, I hope you know that. I can’t—never mind that I can’t see you go through that again, you cannot put _Gabe_ through that. I don’t give a shit about Josi but I can’t just let you fuck Gabe over like that. I won’t—that would be really bad.”

“I know, okay. I really get it. I won’t—I couldn’t do that to him,” Tyson says, even though that sounds a little weak to his own ears. He’d never imagined he could do what he did to Roman, not in those days they spent tangled up in each other or even in the days before he headed to LA, fully intent on seeing him and—he didn’t know what would happen after that. 

That’s what made him freak out and run, the complete unknown of what would go on after he saw Roman in LA. He wasn’t even sure what was going to happen in LA, but then never finding out turned out to be a disaster anyway.

At least now he has a good idea of what would happen with Gabe: Tyson will fuck it up, somehow, someway. He’ll freak out over the depth of his own feelings, smacked in the face with the harsh reality of how much he loves Gabe, or panic because he suspects Gabe might love him back.

This thing will end, bad and messy probably, and they’ll either go back to playing hockey together and pretend nothing happened, or they’ll never really recover from it and Tyson’s life as he knows it will be over. Both options seem brutally terrible but Tyson can’t see any other pathway out of here. He can barely imagine it.

“I’ll figure out a way to end things soon where we’re—okay,” Tyson says. Nate sucks in a hurt breath, letting it out slowly. He pulls the car over somewhere and Tyson doesn’t even look at where they are; they could be home or back at the mall or in Nashville for all he knows. “I promise I will. It’ll be better for everyone.”

Nate slumps in his seat. “Yeah, I mean—probably, man.” He fidgets with the bottom of the steering wheel. “That sucks, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You guys seem happy.”

Tyson shrugs. “I guess we are. But it’s—you know, right? Like how can it even keep going? How’s it gonna work?”

“I don’t know,” Nate says. “I guess it’s just hard when it’s a guy. I don’t know any teammates that do shit like this and make it work.”

“Exactly. So, I’ll handle it.” Tyson snorts, shaking his head. “Maybe it won’t even matter. Maybe we’ll get traded and we won’t have to worry about it.” That possibility’s still there, of course, like the mayo on this shit sandwich of a season. The trade deadline hasn’t passed yet.

Nate glares at him. “Don’t you dare get traded. I’ll kill you both if you get traded and leave me here like this.” He throws the car into park with flared nostrils. “Come on, go get your fucking apology Blizzard, let’s go.”

Tyson hops out of the car and smiles up at the glowing red and blue DQ sign, bright through the winter haze.

 

 

They don’t get traded. Nobody gets fucking traded except for Iggy and Marty and it’s almost embarrassing that nobody really answers for this joke season, but Tyson doesn’t dwell on that for long. He’s still here. Gabe’s still here. As spring starts to threaten to bloom around them and with it the promise of the end of this never-ending schedule, that feels like all that matters.

Of course, that also means it feels like there’s something of a time limit on ending things amicably with Gabe. He probably has to do it before the end of the season, but it’s hard to think about when they just keep on having sex and watching movies and getting dinner and just being together.

Tyson wakes up in bed with Gabe and he’s happy; it fades when he thinks about what he promised Nate, what he has to do, but it kicks up again whenever Gabe does anything, whenever he smiles at Tyson or kisses him or grabs his ass or is naked. He pulls on one of his warm, tight sweaters and wraps his arms around him like he’s sharing the sweater and Tyson thinks that only an insane person could end this. 

He kind of hopes it happens naturally, like they have a fight and get dramatic and end it all. Gabe has his temper but he seems to have a lot of patience with Tyson, too, so that even stuff that could turn into a fight wind up being okay.

Like the first Roman Josi conversation. “So,” Gabe says a few nights after that dinner with Nate and EJ, and a few nights before Nashville is coming into town for a game. “Look, I never asked, and I swear I’m not like, mad or jealous or—”

“Oh my god,” Tyson says, turning to face him. They’ve been trying to pick a movie to watch for like a good 25 minutes and now Tyson knows why Gabe’s been noncommittally humming at all of his suggestions. Would Gabe dump him if he threw the Apple TV remote at him? Probably not, so it’s not worth it. “Are you trying to ask me if I’m going to bang Josi when the Preds get here?”

Gabe goes red, shrugging and pressing his lips together in a sheepish grin. “I mean—I don’t think you are, because I don’t think we’re doing that—”

“Doing what?” Tyson asks, amused. Gabe blushes more but also gives Tyson a pouty sort of look.

“Like sleeping with other people.” 

Tyson laughs a little. “Yeah, no, we’re not doing that.” He screws on an alarmed, overly worried face. “Wait, are _you_?”

“What? No!” Gabe looks truly alarmed until he catches Tyson tamping down on a smile and groans. “God, you suck _so_ much.”

“It’s what I do, yeah.”

“I’m serious, though. Like, we should talk about it, right?” Tyson opens his mouth again and Gabe cuts him off when a quick head shake. “No, shut up, I know you hate talking about this stuff. We’re talking about it. End of story.”

“Wow, who made you boss?”

“I made me boss,” Gabe says, puffing his chest out and sitting up straight. Then he looks Tyson in the eye and says, “Tyson. Is there anything we should talk about with Josi coming into town?”

Tyson bursts out laughing harder than before. 

“What? Come on, man, I’m trying not to be—”

“That’s what you want to say?” Tyson asks, tossing his head back and laughing deeply. “‘Tys, I know you hate talking about this stuff, now tell me what you want to talk about!’”

Gabe glares at him. “That is _not_ what I sound like.”

“It definitely is, though.”

“Will you shut up and be an adult for like five seconds?” Gabe yells a little, and Tyson grins. He really kind of loves making Gabe lose his cool and yell at him. It’s easy when he presses the right buttons and he enjoys that he knows how to do that, that Gabe lets loose with him. 

Of course, it’s another part of their relationship that makes him dread what he promised Nate, but Tyson doesn’t think about that. Basically all of the parts of their relationship make him dread that.

Even this part, where Gabe is a little embarrassed and a little annoyed and wants Tyson to volunteer information about Roman Josi and doesn’t want to ask for it. He’d apparently been sitting on wanting to know and now he’s run out of patience and Tyson finds that hopelessly endearing.

And suddenly he’s willing to talk about Roman, even though he hasn’t really done that with anybody. “We’re not doing anything anymore,” Tyson says, still grinning at Gabe because the whole thing is hilarious and he’s just grateful that it’s more hilarious than humiliating or painful. “We haven’t even really talked since the summer of 2015, honestly. We barely text.” They text sometimes, maybe more than last season post-apology but not by much. He still wouldn’t call them friends.

But Gabe is still looking at him like a wounded Ken Doll or something so Tyson rolls his eyes and keeps going. “You know he has a girlfriend, right?” Tyson may have deleted his public Instagram but that doesn’t mean he’s completely without stalking capabilities. And anyway, Cody told him too. It’s fine. 

“I really don’t keep up,” Gabe says, like a brat. Tyson rolls his eyes again.

“Look, you probably got this already but—it ended badly. There’s really nothing you have to worry about.”

Finally Gabe has the decency to look a bit sheepish, ducking his head and softening his face. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asks in what seems like a genuine, gentle question, not a demand for information.

Tyson shrugs. He thinks he’d actually do better with the demands. “I mean, there’s not much to say. I was a giant asshole to him. It’s part of why, I mean, when we started this, I told you I thought this was a bad idea. That’s a part of it.”

“What, that you and Josi ended badly?”

“No, more that I’m a giant asshole,” Tyson says firmly, and finally Gabe laughs a little, shaking his head.

“Oh, that’s easy.”

“Really? Is it?” 

“It is. Just don’t be an asshole to me.” Gabe shrugs like it truly is that simple, and Tyson stares at him.

“What makes you think I can do that?” This conversation is bordering on surreal, as all conversations like this feel to Tyson, but Gabe doesn’t seem to notice or care, settling back down in his seat and looking back at the TV like he’s finally remembered it’s there and what they were supposed to be doing on the other side of this annoying confrontation. 

“Well, we’ve been doing this for three months and you haven’t been an asshole to me yet,” Gabe says. He puts his feet up on the coffee table and crosses his ankles; Tyson stares at his thick wool socks and tries not to feel like three months is a very long time. “Keep it up, buddy.”

“I mean, I’ll try,” Tyson says, and he’s thinking that maybe he shouldn’t, that maybe that isn’t really helping. But he didn’t just promise to end things with Gabe—he promised to end things in a way where they’ll both be okay. So it’s good advice to keep this up, really. Tyson really should ride this streak as long as possible.

“Cool. So do you want to pick a movie or just jerk each other off and pass out on the couch like the other night?”

“We could do both,” Tyson grumbles, and Gabe lets out a hooting laugh. Tyson looks at his open, pleased face and wonders if he’s actually capable of being an asshole to Gabe. He thinks probably not. 

He also wonders if he’s capable of breaking up with him, amicably or not. Nothing that happens in the following days suggests that he is. 

Tyson wakes up in Gabe’s bed or with Gabe in his; he picks Zoey up at daycare with him and goes bike-riding with him as the snow clears out and they use the stand mixer and a bunch of Youtube videos to make homemade pizza dough and Snap every bit of it at EJ, who doesn’t understand or remember the reference. Apparently EJ’s pizza stone has been around long enough to leave an impression on both Tyson and Gabe, but not long enough to leave an impression on EJ. And they don’t have a pizza stone so they use an upside down cast iron pan and only drop it once and on nobody’s foot. It’s a good day. 

There’s not even an opportunity to break up with Gabe when the second Roman Josi conversation happens, after the game vs. Nashville. The Preds make roadkill out of them again on their home ice, bad enough that it’s embarrassing and Tyson can’t actually remember the last time they beat this team and that has to be some kind of cosmic joke.

So during the game when they’re skating around on a stoppage and waiting to line up for the faceoff, Tyson finds himself skating by Roman, which isn’t exactly an oddity considering it’s a hockey game and they’re playing against each other. He slows down enough to talk to him, which also isn’t an oddity—they chirp each other like normal hockey players. No one listening to them could ever guess how much of each other’s dicks they’ve had in their mouths and so on. 

The score isn’t completely out of hand at this point in the second period, but the way both teams are playing makes Tyson say, “Come on Jos, you gotta lift the curse sometime, this is ridiculous.”

Roman grins at him, small and secret and familiar. His eyes flash as he ducks his head and skates easy, lazy circles around Tyson. “Too bad.”

“It’s not even fair, man.”

“Tough shit.” Roman skates close enough to give him a bump, shoulder to shoulder, grinning the whole time, and Tyson grins back and slashes him a little, a tap across the gloves, and it’s fine. A passing linesman tells them to cut it out and they line up for the faceoff and it’s like a hundred moments in every hockey game Tyson’s ever played.

The curse is not lifted; the Avs lose the game and Tyson kind of feels like _well what else is new_? The sting hasn’t faded completely but he’s also become a bit numb to it—it’s just how hockey works for them now. They play, they lose. It’s only particularly annoying right now because it’s the Preds, but yeah, Tyson probably deserves it.

Things are completely fine and chill through doing media, through their post-game cooldown and showers. Gabe doesn’t act like anything’s weird or anything, which is good; all he says to Tyson is, “It’s snowing, make sure you dry your hair before you leave so none of it freezes off,” which prompts Comes to say, “Yeah you really can’t afford to lose any more, Tys,” and like. Hair insults from a bald guy cut pretty damn deep.

So Tyson’s distracted by that when he steps out into the hallway outside the dressing room and runs right into Roman, standing by himself with a few of the wives and kids waiting for their guys to come out. 

Gabe heads out right after Tyson and winds up running right into his back when Tyson freezes in place, and he says, “What the fuck Tyson, get moving, I want to get out of—” and then stops when he looks around Tyson’s shoulder and sees Roman.

“Hey,” Roman says, giving them both a nod before looking at Tyson. “So, we’re snowed in. Can’t fly out tonight.” He rolls his eyes. “It was completely sunny this morning but, you know, this is the luck I have.”

“Yeah,” Tyson says in a voice that doesn’t sound much like his own, high and fake. “Well, that’s Denver for ya.” Behind him, Gabe coughs into his hand and it might be a laugh. Tyson probably deserves it.

Roman nods, his eyes going a little wide like he can’t really believe they’re standing here talking about the weather. He glances over at Gabe for a second, still pressed up against Tyson’s back, and then meets Tyson’s eyes again. “Listen, do you want to—I think you should buy me dinner.”

“Uh,” Tyson says articulately. Roman’s eyes sparkle a bit. 

“Yeah, I really think so. We should talk about, you know, the curse.” He looks at Gabe again, then bites his bottom lip. 

“The curse—oh, geez,” Tyson says, shaking his head. “You know I was just kidding about that, we really don’t have to—”

“Tyson,” Roman says, and it’s such a harsh, real reminder of that summer that Tyson feels like he was just dunked in cold water. No one says his name quite like that, with the same mix of disdain and fascination, and Tyson is kind of reeling from it. He might be imagining things, but Gabe inches closer to him. “We should talk about it.”

“Talk about the curse,” Gabe says flatly, making Tyson jump. 

Roman looks at him and nods. “Yes, the curse. It’s a defenseman thing, okay?”

Tyson can hear the dark smile in Gabe’s voice when he echoes Roman again, “A defenseman thing, all right, that sounds—interesting. You should tell me about it, man.” He gives Tyson a sort of whack on the arm and then starts moving around him and _leaving_ , and Tyson grabs his wrist before he can quite stop himself.

“What are you doing?” he asks, and then thinks fast enough to add, “Uh, right now? You could come with us—”

“I don’t think so,” Gabe says at the same time that Roman says, “No that’s okay,” and Tyson blinks between the two of them and then maybe has to lean against the wall. 

“Okay,” he says faintly. His voice is high and fake again, and he gives them both a violent, cheerful double thumbs up. “Let’s do it, then. Talking about the curse, all right.”

“I’ll catch you later, buddy,” Gabe says, and then he has to tug his wrist a few times to get it out of Tyson’s grasp. They watch him leave and then Roman turns to Tyson in the now empty hallway. 

“Thanks for your help on that, excuse me for trying not to out you to your teammate—”

“It’s—I’m sorry, I know. I’m a fucking mess,” Tyson says, shaking his head and scrubbing his hands over his face. When pulls them away, Roman is smiling at him a little, also shaking his head. 

“Yeah, you don’t have to tell me that.”

“Thanks. So. Dinner?” 

Roman nods sharply. “Dinner. Think it’s the last you can do, right?”

Tyson shrugs helplessly and they start walking out together. “I mean, right. Pretty much.” 

He takes Roman to a place where you really need reservations, except one look at Roman and no one is giving them any kind of hard time when it comes to getting a table. The whole thing is surreal but Tyson’s brain has decided to shut itself down for safety and just go with it. 

For a while, as they order and eat and drink a bit of wine, it seems like Roman is doing that, too. They don’t actually talk about anything super serious, and Tyson remembers that Roman avoided that as much as he ever did; it’s only now occurring to him that maybe Roman is just as bad at it as he is. 

That’s a sobering thought, especially when he sees the slight tremor in Roman’s hands every so often while they talk about nothing, about hockey and Ryan Ellis’ beard and the depressing playoff race. “This division, man,” Roman says and Tyson nods along like they wouldn’t be at the very bottom of any division, like he can commiserate with something so far away as a playoff race right now. 

“Well, I’m glad the curse is helping,” Tyson says, and Roman chuckles and takes a hearty sip of wine. Maybe it’s a chug. And maybe Roman is doing a really brave, really decent thing here by making Tyson buy him dinner and maybe Tyson should meet him halfway. After all, that’s how they started this; it ended when Tyson stopped doing that. “And I’m—I’m sorry.”

Roman’s smile freezes on his face. He puts down his wine glass and wipes at his mouth with a cloth napkin and then looks at Tyson with his familiar raised eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean I drunkenly texted you that already but—I should say it. It’s the truth and you should know how sorry I am.”

“Thanks,” Roman says, nodding slowly. “I appreciate hearing it.”

“I’m glad you even want to hear it, that you’re even talking to me,” Tyson continues, shrugging. “I’d understand it if you didn’t want to.”

“I think for a long a time, I didn’t want to,” Roman tells him, looking down at his wine glass and swirling it around a little. “I was so—but it was weird, because the whole thing was that I wanted to see you, right? And you didn’t show. So it wasn’t—it wasn’t great, last year.” He takes the last gulp of his wine and before he even has the glass down on the table again, Tyson’s pouring him the rest of the bottle. Roman gives him a grateful smile and raises the glass a bit. “It’s better now, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to punch you anymore. And I’m happy, you know. I have someone. I’m—I’m really happy I’m with her.” 

Tyson smiles and it’s a real smile. “I’m happy too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Roman says, and they eat for a bit more without picking at threads until Roman eventually puts his cutlery down and takes a big breath. “Okay but—I still don’t know why.”

Tyson winces. He’d been afraid of that, and at the same time it feels completely inevitable. “I—does it really matter?”

Roman’s nostril flare slightly, and he gives Tyson a hard look. “Yeah, it matters.” He softens briefly, eyes drooping. “Did I—I was trying to figure out if I did something, you know? I didn’t think I did but—”

“No, god no, you didn’t do anything,” Tyson rushes out, and Roman snorts.

“Okay, calm down. I thought I didn’t. So then why? I really want to know that.”

“I—I don’t know, okay? I freaked out.”

“What did you freak out about?”

“I don’t _know_.”

“I don’t really believe that,” Roman says, sniffing. Tyson wonders if the real curse at play here is that he’s destined to only ever be into the most stubborn men on the planet and looks helplessly up at the ceiling, but there’s no help there either. He’ll have to face this one.

“Because I was in love with you,” Tyson whispers, semi-furious. His face feels hot. “It freaked me out. I didn’t see any way it wouldn’t end in a disaster so I just—ended it. I should’ve done a better job of it but—really, I freaked out.”

Roman is quiet for a few moments. He picks up his knife and fork again but just plays around with the food remnants on his plate, the little clinking sounds setting Tyson’s teeth on edge.

The moments stretch out too long and soon Tyson is restless enough to start blurting out something stupid, no plan as usual. But Roman knows enough about him to head that off, at least, and he finally answers.

“I don’t really believe that,” Roman says again, and Tyson huffs. 

“What? Which part?”

“The part where you were in love with me,” he says, so quiet it makes Tyson’s heart thud in his throat. 

Tyson stares at him. “Uh, okay? It’s the truth though so I don’t know what you’re talking about but—”

“When you’re in love with someone, you do anything you can to be with them,” Roman says, every word flat and dull but serious; he’s looking Tyson right in the eye and Tyson feels pinned. “Even if you freak out. Because not being with them sounds so horrible that nothing could be worse. Not even—whatever you were afraid of, and I still don’t really know what that was. Whatever.”

Tyson’s face is still hot, but he chips the words he has to say out of where they’ve been lodged in his chest for almost two years now. “But—I did love you. I know what I felt. I just couldn’t—look, can you tell me something?”

“Sure, I’ll try,” Roman says, and Tyson knows he means it.

“Can you tell me what you thought would happen after we met up in LA? Like, what did you expect?” 

Roman takes another few moments to think of it, but this time Tyson doesn’t rush him; he’s afraid of what he’s going to hear. “I was thinking that we’d have dinner,” Roman says slowly, as if he’s really thinking back. “And maybe walk along the pier. And then we could go to my hotel and have sex.”

“And then what?” Tyson asks, the question sticking in his throat a bit and breaking up his voice. “What was gonna happen after that?”

Now Roman’s brow is furrowed. “I mean—I don’t know? I figured you’d stay in LA for a bit so we could—”

“But after LA?” Tyson adds insistently, and some kind of realization dawns in Roman’s eyes.

“Oh,” he says, and he ducks his gaze down. “I—I wanted to keep seeing you.”

“ _How_?” 

Roman throws his hands up. “Jesus, you—I don’t know, Tyson! But I wanted to figure it out. We could’ve figured it out, you know?” His puts his hands down and curls his fingers over the table cloth, and his voice gets smaller. “I thought it was worth it to figure out.”

“Jesus Christ,” Tyson says, feeling his throat tighten up, and he doesn’t ask for what Roman says next, doesn’t particularly want to hear it, but knows he’s going to have to anyway.

“Because I was in love with you,” Roman tells him carefully, lowly, watching that blow land across Tyson’s face. 

Then he twists around to find the waiter and orders another bottle of wine.

 

 

Tyson texts Gabe with slightly numb fingers as soon as he drops Roman off at his hotel. _U home ?_ He starts driving in the direction of Gabe’s house, glances at Gabe’s answer, and then veers towards his own house instead.

It’s snowing a little, again, another dusting to add onto the pile that’s kept Roman in Denver to have that dinner. Tyson’s breath puffs out of him as he heads into his house and he’s barely outside for long but enough that there’s a light layer of snow melting on his jacket when he steps into his warm foyer.

Gabe is there, sitting in his living room, and so is Zoey, which makes Tyson’s chest go warm. “Hey,” Gabe says when Tyson steps in, looking up and smiling at him. It’s a little tight but determined, too, and Tyson tries not to feel overwhelmed. “Sorry, I just—I felt dumb hanging out at my house, and I wanted to see you, but I didn’t want to just leave Zoey—”

“It’s fine, man,” Tyson says, shaking his head. “You know you guys are always welcome. And, look.” He shuffles quickly into his kitchen, loosening his tie, and comes back with a big bag of Zoey’s dog food, which makes her sit right up from her sprawl on the floor. “It’s her brand, right?”

There’s a dull quiet in the room for a moment, and Tyson watches Gabe swallow hard. Then he stands up and steps over Zoey to get to Tyson, to grab him and pull him in close with the food bag crinkled between them. 

He kisses Tyson hard on the mouth, wet and a little desperate, and Tyson kisses back without hesitation before he breaks apart and laughs a little. “Relax,” he says in a near whisper, and Gabe searches his face and then rolls his eyes and just kisses him again. 

They get upstairs pretty quickly; Gabe loves Tyson’s bed, loves pulling it apart and getting them to sink into it and get swallowed up. Tonight, he doesn’t even turn down the duvet, just tipping Tyson back onto it and following him down immediately. They keep kissing, and Gabe only diverts his attention from Tyson’s mouth to pull at Tyson’s clothes, hands shaking.

Tyson feels like they should be having a conversation here. His heart feels full of the kinds of words he should say, his head a jumbled mess of feelings he can’t help and feelings he doesn’t want to stop having. And he can’t believe he’s in a position where he wants to _talk_ , when Gabe clearly just wants to have sex as soon as possible.

“We should—” Tyson mumbles through all the frenzied kissing; it’s like an out of body experience.

And Gabe presses, “Later,” in a breath against his lips, sealing it there with his tongue, and Tyson snaps right back into his body and doesn’t try to start the talk again. They have time, he reasons, which is a heavy concept in and of itself.

Tyson lets Gabe get them naked and then he pushes Gabe down to sit on top of him, lending all his weight to Gabe’s thick, solid body. Gabe looks up at him the same way he always does, awed and sweet and hungry, and Tyson sucks in a deep breath and lets himself bask in that look for a moment, to revel in it and enjoy it. His toes curl. 

They’re at Tyson’s house, in his bedroom, so lube and condoms are easy to find but Tyson still makes sure they take their time with it. He stretches himself out in front of Gabe, fingering himself just on the edge of not good enough, not like Gabe does it, and draws out the frustrated wanting on Gabe’s face until he loses patience and grabs Tyson’s wrist.

And soon he’s leaning on Gabe’s thighs with three of Gabe’s fingers thrusting up into him, wet and firm and insistent, feeling out the well-worn path to Tyson’s prostate. His hips stutter and shake and there’s a split second when Gabe gets him so good that Tyson does this horribly embarrassing gasping hiccup sound, and they both kind of freeze and grin at each other.

Tyson laughs, and he expects Gabe to laugh too, because they do that a lot during sex. But Gabe doesn’t; his face just gets really soft and he keeps looking up at Tyson like he’s the best thing he’s ever seen, enough that Tyson almost wants to shrink away at this point. It’s almost too much. 

Gabe slowly pulls his fingers out of Tyson and Tyson takes the direction it is to roll the condom on, to stroke lube over it until Gabe is just as wet as he feels. He slides down on Gabe’s dick with slow, careful and deliberate movements. He bottoms out with a sigh and Gabe rubs at his thighs, sits up a little and cups his hips in his hands, and Tyson’s never felt so held before.

He puts good, hearty effort into fucking himself on Gabe’s dick, grunting whenever Gabe thrusts up to meet him. It never gets fully in sync, each movement a bit off beat and stuttered, but soon they’re fucking so hard and fast it doesn’t matter—the slap of sweaty skin on skin overwhelms everything.

The sounds they make mix up and the heavy breaths they force in and out mingle in the warm, steamed air of the bedroom and it’s almost impossible to tell which one is moving which way, like it doesn’t matter because they’re rapidly tumbling towards the same conclusion.

They don’t make it there together but it’s close enough. Gabe comes first, holding Tyson so close to him and groaning out so loudly that Tyson has to grip his headboard to keep his balance. 

He leaves a sweaty handprint on the fabric and doesn’t really have time to dwell on it before he’s coming, too, wrapping his arms around Gabe’s head and back, dropping deep into his hold and burying his face in his golden hair.

The handprint is forgotten in the slow but careful process of extracting themselves from each other, cleaning up a little and finally turning the bed down and getting into it properly. It’s still too warm in the bedroom to hold each other the way they are but they do it anyway, Tyson rolling himself straight into Gabe’s hold and curling up against his chest. 

Tyson wants to open his window and let the chilled air outside break the heat up a bit, because he knows he’ll never be cold in this position. But he doesn’t want to leave Gabe’s arms long enough to do that, and anyway, Gabe said “Later.” There’s still some stuff Tyson wants to say.

He’s thinking about how to start as Gabe strokes his stomach lightly, fingernails scratching gently across his still-buzzing skin. Gabe’s not fully relaxed, holding himself a little tightly against him, and Tyson remembers the tight but determined smile on his face when he’d walked in. 

“Are you okay?” he asks Gabe, and he feels Gabe nod. 

“Yeah. I mean, it was weird tonight, but—” He breaks off and Tyson hears him swallow hard.

He’s a little sick of just feeling and hearing Gabe and so he turns to face him, looking up into his brightened eyes, a little feverish and a little worried, too. “Can you tell me something?” Tyson asks Gabe, and Gabe nods firmly. 

“Sure. Anything.”

“What do you think is going to happen after this?” Tyson asks, the words only catching in his throat a little. He’s terrified of the answer but he thinks he always will be, whatever the scenario is. It’s probably time he accepted that and just started rolling with it instead of running from it. 

Gabe doesn’t ask for clarification, just seems to take a moment to think about it. He clears his throat a little and says, “I think—I hope, tomorrow we’ll wake up together, and eat breakfast, and walk Zoey.” His voice catches a bit. “Zoey will eat the food you got her, and you got her favorite kind so—”

“Yeah,” Tyson says softly, smiling a small smile. “And then after that? What happens after that?”

“We’ll go to practice,” Gabe says. “We’ll play hockey together, I guess. We’ll go see that fucking Fast and Furious movie you want to see—”

“Hell yeah we will,” Tyson says, laughing a little, and this time Gabe joins him. 

Gabe takes his hand in both of his and squeezes it tightly. “Yeah, we’ll just—keep doing this. We can—we can talk about what to do in the offseason, if you want to go somewhere together, if you want—whatever, right? We’ll talk about it. We’ll just—keep being together.” He shrugs and ducks his head to look at their joined hands instead of Tyson’s eyes. “That’s what I want to do, at least. And I think it’s a good idea.”

Tyson takes a steadying breath and lets it out slowly. He knows there’s a question there that he needs to answer, but he doesn’t quite want to just say it like that yet. He wants to explain, because a long time ago, when they first tried to start this, Gabe asked him to explain and he never really did. 

And he’s really fucking bad at it, but—he starts without a plan, as always. “I just never thought—I always—” Tyson breaks off, trying hard to rework the words so they make sense. He waits until Gabe’s looking at him again before he sits up, because that feels more manageable, and Gabe sits up with him, but he doesn’t let go of Tyson’s hand.

After another big, steadying breath, Tyson says, “I’m gay.” It’s occurred to him that he’s never actually said that out loud to anyone, even though a number of people know. It had never occurred to him until now that that might be a problem, as embarrassing as it is to say the words out loud.

Gabe blinks slowly, then nods and gives Tyson a warm smile. “That’s—that’s really cool. Me too.”

“Yeah?” Tyson says, pushing through the break in his voice, and Gabe nods again. 

“Yeah, I am. Thanks for telling me, man.”

“Yeah, I mean—you too.” Tyson tries to push through the sudden rush in his head, the faint stinging pricking at his eyes, but it’s a little harder. “And I mean—I never thought, playing hockey, that I could do things like this when I’m—yeah. I just didn’t think it was possible. I still just keep thinking that it won’t work.”

He realizes he’s bracing himself a little, and he’s being so careful but Gabe takes everything in stride, nodding once more, looking thoughtful and considering. He seems to choose his words carefully but he rubs a soothing thumb over Tyson’s knuckles, too. “I get that,” Gabe says, and it’s such a relief that Tyson has to look away. “I understand. When I was younger and I knew how hard it was—I always thought I’d just, you know, find a girl and make it work and fit in, right? Like I’d figure it out and it would be fine.” He shakes his head. “But there’s no way I’m gonna do that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. No way. I can’t do that to someone, or live a lie like that. So I just—I want to be with who I want to be with, however that has to be. Even if it’s mostly secret, or if it’s hard, it’s still—it’s the only option for me.”

“That’s really—that’s great, Gabe.” It all sounds so terrifying, and incredibly brave to Tyson. But Gabe is probably the bravest person he knows so that makes sense. 

It’s still hard to conceptualize. But he’s in this now, and truly there are no other options for him: it’s either try something like this, or keep breaking his own heart for the rest of his career. Tyson’s kind of known this all along but as scary as his feelings are, as inconvenient as it is to keep falling in love like a moron, he can’t actually get away from it or stop it. Not when it’s real like this. Not when it’s Gabe, who wants exactly what he wants and isn’t too scared to actually have it.

“Okay,” Tyson says finally. He gives Gabe another smile, tremulous but real, and very quickly Gabe is smiling back. “So, yeah. What are we going to have for breakfast, then?”

Gabe laughs, and leans in to kiss him, and doesn’t let go of his hand.

 

 

Tyson heads over to pick up Gabe a little early. They’re going to meet up with EJ, Nate and a few others to go out for Picks’ birthday; they have a few days before most of them scatter for Worlds and they’re trying to make the most of this pocket of time where they get to be together but not as the worst hockey team in the league anymore. 

The hell season’s over, after all. EJ’s stopped wearing the teeth again so things feel back to normal. And teeth or not, in the offseason there’s just a lot of hope for what next season will be like. There’s still trade stress, of course—that’s always going to be there for Tyson, but it’s died down enough for Gabe that he feels like he can live with it again, at least. 

The season’s _over_ and Tyson’s never been so fucking happy to see hockey ending, not even when he was a kid and still hated playing. He kind of understands that kid a little better after this season. He doesn’t want to get traded—“Your boyfriend’s the captain, they can’t trade you,” Nate keeps saying, and he’s the only one who regularly calls Gabe Tyson’s boyfriend but it makes Tyson grin like an idiot every time so it’s worth it when EJ makes fun of them for it—and Gabe’s not the only reason but man. He’s really looking forward to not playing hockey for a little while.

And then he’s looking forward to playing hockey again, with his best friend and his boyfriend and his stupid horse friend and even the friends who don’t want to play with him anymore, like Dutchy. 

They’ll go to Worlds and have a good time; after that, he has plans to meet up with Gabe and head to Italy, just the two of them. It’s about time he got there for real. 

And after _that_ , there will be a new season. Hopefully Tyson will still be on the Avalanche, and he made it really clear in his exit interviews with the front office that he wants that to still be the case, but either way: next season is a clean slate. Historic or not, they’ll have the chance to make this horrible season go away, and Tyson knows that everyone involved wants to make the most of that chance, even if they don’t necessarily all want to do it together. He can work with that because he and Gabe want to do it together and that might be the greatest chance of all.

So that’s the plan as Tyson sees it, and it’s not so terrifying when he arranges it like that in his mind. He stays in his car on Gabe’s street, letting it all play out in front of him, trying to bury himself in it until it feels wholly possible instead of a ridiculous fantasy he never used to let himself have for too long. 

While he’s sitting there, the passenger side door of his car pops open and Gabe suddenly gets in, sitting down and leaning across the console to kiss Tyson firmly on the mouth before putting his seatbelt on. 

“I saw you get here like 10 minutes ago and I got too impatient waiting for you to come in,” Gabe says, like Tyson even needs that explanation, like he doesn’t know Gabe well enough by now. 

Gabe’s grinning at him fondly, like he knows Tyson’s being an idiot too wrapped up in his own head and doesn’t mind at all, and then drums his fingers on the dashboard. “Come on, let’s go! Picks isn’t getting any younger and if we finish up with them early we can have sex before we get too drunk.”

Tyson mirrors Gabe’s grin, looking out through the windshield at the cool spring dusk settling around them as he throws the car out of park and starts pulling away from the curb. 

“That’s a good idea,” Tyson says, and Gabe’s laughter is brighter than the sinking sun.

**Author's Note:**

> [Here’s the epilogue.](https://twitter.com/truffulafruits/status/986752771641704448) (note this is not a real epilogue pls don’t get excited) 
> 
> I fussed around with game schedules for this because they weren't cooperating; hope you don't mind! 
> 
> If you’ve made it all the way to the end of this and liked it, maybe you’d like to do some Gabe/Tyson fic of your own! Or maybe you loved Nate in this and want to write fic about him! Ditto EJ! Ditto any Av! Well, you’re in luck, because signups for this [Avs fic challenge](https://avsfamfic.tumblr.com/post/176700718526/welcome-to-boys-are-hot-a-colorado-avalanche-fic) are going until 8/22/18 and you should totally check it out. :)


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